“if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.”
-Thomas & Thomas 1928
My Bachelor Thesis articulates how perception and reality are manipulated in the current media ecology by exposing the links between the economic structures of social media, its effects on journalism, the data-science of hacking human psychology for behavioral change, and contemporary media manipulation as psychological warfare. Perception is reality fed through Baudrillard’s hyper-real media environment, optimized for an audience of one. History gives way to the perpetual, insta-consumable, media optimization as commodified escapism, sensationalism, and outrage. This results in the manifestation of multiple conflicting realities each vying to occupy the same space.
I am fascinated by this as a design problem and aesthetic. My architectural designs explore the layers of social tension in the disillusion of public and private space. I manipulate the perceptions of space to cut through the ever-ecstatic noise to inspire intimacy and presence in participation. I designed a public restroom of transparent mirrors in the center of a wrapping steel partition which both vails and invites public attention.
My image making is inspired by the Self as edited artifice optimized for self-objectification for social, projection, consumption, and seduction. I create a system for a series of a single figurative images to be made in multiple through additive and subtractive distortion as it transfers between on and offline realities. The work is simultaneously a mechanical process and an infinite jest of improvisation. Each is a paradox, de-hyper-individualized.
Joseph Depre:
BFA w/ VCS Thesis