Narrative of a Consumer
Digital multimedia projection installation (video)
Project Type: Independent student project
Role: Graphic designer & visual artist
Tools: Procreate
Process
This work is a digital multimedia projection video about a narrative of a consumer’s interactions with media. Through the stages of unawareness, awareness and empowerment, a narrative of a consumer's reflexive restructuring process of self is shown through their interactions with media in three parts.
Part I: Unawareness stage: The consumer is within the cycle of advertising and consumer culture. In the unawareness stage, the consumer is consuming persuasive advertisement messages and rhetoric. The consumer (me) sits down, with eyes closed, signifying unconsciousness and disassociation representing the consumer within the cycle of advertising and consumer culture.
Part II: Awareness stage: The consumer is aware and desires to match oneself to society through reflexive restructuring. The consumer tries to match the facial expressions being projected. The matching of my facial expressions to the projections on my face, represents “Reflexive restructuring [which] means the continuous monitoring of public facades of identity and the utilization of elements from the public sphere to re-engineer the self [me as consumer] in social encounters…to ensure that the right kind of match between self [me as consumer] and society is achieved” (Rojek, p. 192).
Part III: Empowerment stage: The consumer is empowered through an awareness of advertisement rhetoric and consumer culture patterns prompting empowered action. The concluding loops of my performance video include the consumer, with eyes open, not following the projected facial expressions, and instead, the consumer looks side-to-side, stands up, and walks out away from the projections. The consumer walks out to the right as an empowered consumer.
References
DeBuff, D. & Berger J. (2020). Why do some advertisements get shared more than others? Quantifying facial expressions to gain new insights. Journal of Advertising Research. 10(5), 370-380. https://doi.org/10.2501/JAR-2020-027
Rojek, C. (2001). Chapter 5: Celebrity and Celebrification. Celebrity (pp. 181-199). Reaktion Books.
