Skypetrait: Transcontinental Faces
Aiming to understand more fully the nature of a ’portrait’ of identity defined by an urbanised and digitalised world.
Through both the process of visual practice and reflection on outcomes, Skypetrait: intercontinental faces research aim is to understand more fully the nature of a ’portrait’ of identity defined by an urbanised and digitalised world, through re-evaluation of the role of drawing within social media. It does this by designing a network that mediates the engagement of people and places through an extension of Blind Contour Drawing and Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain techniques into the public space of Skype. The Skype screen interface reinforces the idea that when we draw we mirror ourselves as much as the other. In this case opposites are drawn together – a dialectic framework of time (morning/evening, Spring/Autumn), space (North/South, town/city), culture (German/Australian, resident/visitor) and medium (physicality of line on paper/immateriality of digital space) – that forms the whole or Die Gestalt. In this context ’portraiture’ becomes less of an interpretation of the individual as a mapping of the collective consciousness of our times. In so doing the project encompasses two parallel research foci – investigation into artistic teaching methodology (Eichinger) and investigation into the impact of urbanisation on cultural perception (McCormick).
Download the Skypetrait publication (PDF 3.1 MB).
Key people
Lead researchers: Dr Maggie McCormick & Professor Henning Eichinger.
Participating artists: Pixi Mix, Christopher Bold, Freya Pitt, Georgina Humphries, Dan Mitchell, Fiona Hillary (Australia) & Annie Kurz, Christina Liadeli, Uta Krauss, Chantel Rasquin, Tatjana Zhabina, Thea Tromsdorf (Germany).