Digital Disruption Project

I lived in San Francisco during the onslaught of the web 2.0 revolution. I watched the city transformed as the forces of digitization shaped and altered the social landscape; it seemed everyone and everything was being pulled into its orbit. I was one among the legions who participated in producing endless streams of ephemeral digital content that contributed virtually nothing to cultural memory. I clicked, swiped, posted, and checked obsessively for acknowledgement and validation. I, like most, became addicted to my electronic devices. Through my frenetic digital activity, I found myself suspended in an anxious, indeterminate present that is described by writer and critic Alan Kirby as “a state of trance that takes the world away; a new weightless nowhere of silent autism.” The very technologies that promised community and human connectivity, were in fact creating alienation and withdrawal. The photos in this series act as metaphors for that state of trance, in which we are rendered as dream walkers—alienated beings who are endlessly diverted and distracted. In this state of trance, it has become increasingly difficult to determine where digital life ends, and physical life begins.