Un-quantified Self Painting

Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff has said we now live in a world where the possibilities of what we are is limitless. That with our current digital technology there’s an “anything’s possible” scenario to life. Everybody can create their own life story. But instead, and very possible because of either the limitations of human psychology or the incipient nature of digital technology, we instead limit, anxiously accommodate ourselves. “Most of our understanding of self through digital technology,” he says, “is through the different ways in which we track ourselves.” We quantify ourselves. What we buy, what we search for, is tracked and recorded, and it is the next ad we see when we digitally interact. Consequently individuality itself has been turned into a brand, rather than being immutably idiosyncratic. And although that is how it has always been, either with the antiquity or modernity, it is now constantly, and strategically targeted and placed before us. We don’t have an out. Society is, and if not now will be, at the beck and call of technology. It is the latest toy. It is our century’s electricity. But contrary to Rushkoff, it is not technology, but the users, again, who are in question – it is “user error.” We put ourselves in a constant state of “emergency interruption,” looking online to create ourselves, looking at what we are most likely to buy, who we are to become – ads, push notifications, pings, intimating that we must keep up. The “Joneses” have gone digital. But the reality is that digital technology is just another amplification of our search of self. It is our next tool in our search for the oracle of individuality, our insistence we must possess it, and our failure to realize that our own idiosyncratic selves are irreplicable.

Painting:Oil on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:62 W x 42 H x 2 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.