Holly Block
Melbourne Australia
Techno-Romance. digital photograph, 2018
Techno-Romance is a digital photographic work depicting a young woman, in a private domestic setting, either inserting or expelling a mobile device from her vagina. Within a Technological Determinist framework, this work is a direct critique on mobile dating applications such as Tinder, highlighting the unprecedented changes in human behaviour both romantically and sexually, and the implications of this from an evolutionary standpoint, where the search for intimacy and connection begins, and often ends, with a device. This work explores this new media visuality and how it is characterised by new consumption rituals and practices which see people become quantifiable, disposable and dehumanised. It attempts to ask “what aspects of sex and romantic love will we inevitably transcend as we become posthuman?”. As the woman inserts the phone into her body, one is unable to discern, is she fucking the device, or the device fucking her?
This work shall be placed underneath a purpose built floor measuring 2 metres deep, with a square perspex window cut into the middle of the floor to view the image below. Viewing the image through this structure will amplify the viewers awareness of peering into a private space. The window measures 1 metres squared. The image will lie flat on the floor below, measuring 2 metres squared. The image will be printed on duratran and installed on a lightbox, to amplify the luminosity and 3D objectness, presenting the object as protagonist and referencing screen culture.