character coding
(width: 2048px / iPad Pro 12.9, personal device) (‘limitless’ in scrolling for UI ease)
Character Coding presents the bridge and barrier of screen-touch-obsession for a particular user (female. early 30s. instagram / youtube / reddit / tiktok / google). Located within the attachment of screen to hand as additional appendage, digital visualisations are far removed from abstract pixelation and are now, through the transitioning to additional appendage, connected through the main artery straight to the hippocampus. Look! A screenshot of a text message received from a ‘potential client’ – share this interaction to social media. Look! Replies, construction of identity as = feminist, #metoo movement, struggles of the gendered.
Scroll down. iPhone shots of the phallic graffitied all over a city. Same day shot at gynaecologist office. Share to Story = solidified solidarity in replies of: ‘Fuck! Hate going for this’, ‘that steel speculum is the worst (insert link) apparently a woman designed a silicone one recently?’.
Search for ‘vanilla’ porn = snake inserted into vagina, masochistic habit of reddit scrolling to purposefully ignite indignation, read world news = ‘trapped’, ‘alleged’. New code of chaos scattered across video search = jumbled sound effects, collaged spinning faces meme-ed, score composed by currently relevant social platform =
genZ, adaptation, incelled tate, pronouns yelled.
The server is trying to establish a connection, error of widely opposing results.
Scroll down.
Agency in witnessing the link ____ 90s barbie button face scissor-scratched in retaliation to not being blue-eyed & blonde as five year old + tap-to-change facial featured filtered into current acceptance (small-nosed + massive-lipped). Green screen of omission acts as a reminder of the continuous flow of information overwhelming, faces and names and institutions will change, consistently, but there will be more and more and more for you to process.
Keep up.
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The interface is no longer clean and easily experienceable, it festers mixed-up. The pictures turn post-traumatic. The pictures turn enlightenment. Character coding gone awry, there is an imprecise assigning of said code to a document with a different default coding than its location. Mojibake (=japanese origin) is composed of: 文字 (moji) = letter / character (eng.) + 化ける (bakeru) = to appear in disguise, to take the form of, to change for the worse (eng.) === character mutation. Particular user feels like misplaced code in misplaced location.
Spaghetti.
Spinning without direction. Taking in too much, spending too much aimlessly.
Current power apparatus defined by reoccurrence of imagery presented with, insert = influence of consumerism, a creation of desire for manipulation of gain. Non-human prone to error.
Answer – closely analyse the mutation and its infrastructures, examine the entry and exit of stimuli into reaction as sacrificial offering of time.
On the occasion of the EMOP Berlin – European Month of Photography 2023, we invited professional and amateur photographers to submit images that explore the expanded surfaces of digital photographic images. Although digital images on screens and smartphones play a significant role in our everyday social lives, media and networks, they are still often underestimated as photographic practices with potential for critical agency and aesthetics.
This open call aimed to engage critically with smartphone imagery to unfold the potential of a Re:Touch.
The work ‘Character Coding’ by Gabriella Achadinha stood out to the jury because it deals accurately and formally aesthetically with the current usage of smartphone photography in the context of the internet and social media. Within a single long strip of images, the artist arranges diverse visual material into a collage and thus already determines the mode of reception: scrolling is encouraged. Screenshots of smartphone lock screens or WhatsApp conversations are superimposed with text and digital drawings. Crudely cut-out found images from the web are juxtaposed with personal photographs, fragments of advertisements appear, interrupted by news headlines and Google search entries. The work employs various methods of citing, copying, and repeating, symptomatic of our digital sharing culture in both the artistic and pop cultural spheres.
Thematically, “Character Coding” deals with female stereotypes, toxic masculinity, and the harassment of individuals perceived as female in online spaces. The work therefore also questions so-called internet phenomena such as hate speech and comments, as well as the current state of net feminism and the male gaze in general.