Cloud Composite

Our next assignment required us to create a composite image that reflected the ideas and themes we explored with our Tag Clouds. After reading Sweeny's article, I was immediately drawn to the idea of cyborgs. When thinking about cyborgs in network societies, I thought about the raltionship between a real individual and their "cyborg" or network selves. I began my search with CYBORG which went to CONNECTION and then to IDENTITY and finally ended on IMITATION. With my image, I decided to create something that looked like a lost individual. At first I placed a human sitting in the center of a labyrith but then realized that my message could not be portrayed with a human being and instead replaced her with a sad-looking robot. On the edge of the labyrinth is a computer graveyard; he is surrounded by dead technologies forcing him to further contemplate his existence. The labyrinth is masked by a circuit board, symbolizing the scattered information that network societies have on real people. I then added informational words that are often asked about one's identity so that the cyborg can be as close to the real person as possible. Things like marital status, hobbies, favorites, and date of birth among the few. Once I "finished" the project, I looked at my image closer and realized it needed something more. 

I thought about René Magritte's The Treachery of Images and the message of imitation he conveyed. "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" or,"This is not a pipe" captioned the bottom of his painting. Magritte's point was to focus on the idea that is was an image of a pipe, rather than an actual pipe. This message went right along with what my image was trying to say. The robot or cyborg above is not an actual person, but rather and imitation of a real human identity. This is when I changed "pipe" to "personne" and added the caption to the bottom of my image making it complete.