André Hillas
New proposal, Honours 2012

We are in a constant search for self-satisfaction and happiness. This search aims to discard the unpleasant aspects in life; work, organisation and self-maintenance. Travel provides an escape from the mundane and our task-ridden lives. It gives us a period of time in which we have no work or daily routine to follow. Mainly, it moves us from our home environment to a new or lesser-known location; a place where we are liberated and given the opportunity to designate activities directed at self-satisfaction. We have ultimate freedom with the way in which we choose to spend our time. High expectations are placed on holidays to provide an elevated level of enjoyment and satisfaction for the traveler. The real holiday experience however, rarely matches those expectations.

When we capture and create memories of our holidays through our digital cameras, we are aware the photos will likely end up online. The photos we take become a performance of sorts for our Facebook friends. We aim to sell the idea that our holiday is perfect. Forced smiles in front of the Eiffel tower and sucked in stomachs in front of tropical Thai beaches become our experience. The process of taking the photographs, deleting images, (possible editing), and selecting the better images for a Facebook album, aim to self-promote and gain online attention. The more ‘likes’ and comments we get on Facebook, the more it validates our self-confidence, and gives us a sense of semi-celebrity status while we revel in ‘notifications’.

Throughout the Honours course, I will research the drivers of our narcissistic output; the push of celebrity culture, the ease of self-publishing, attention deficit, a search for fame. Likes and comments received on sites such as Facebook validate a call for self-validation that one ultimately seeks when sharing content on the Internet. I will read texts such as Alain De Botton’s “The Art of Travel”, Thomas Moore’s “Utopia”, Michel Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish”, Freud and Lacane on Narcissim and Satre’s “The Imaginary” to give me a better understanding from a psychological view on what drives our motivations.

Travel photographs play a large part in online imagery. The travel photograph typifies a person’s ideal use of time. A holiday promises fun, relaxation, adventure and enjoyment. Often, our expectation of the experience is too high and the actual holiday fails to meet our expectations. Through our travel photography we selectively capture and create new memories often aiming to sell a better version that the holiday we are experiencing.

My work will be concerned with ‘Facebook-esque’ style self-portraits as well as home made videos, akin to the style found on YouTube. Through an editing process via Photoshop and Final Cut, I will insert myself into particular situations as the ‘ultimate tourist’. The editing will rely on a percentage of falsity (planned flaws in the editing process) that critiques the online culture through a near-replication of the real. Irony exists in the small details that allow the viewer to see a distinction between my images and what it aims to critique. For example, my imagery will involve subtracting the better elements from four or five different photographs to create one ‘idealised’ Facebook profile picture. Using Photoshop, my plan is to meticulously recreate the image so it looks primarily flawless. However, to sustain the meaning in the work it needs to rely on a very small fraction of falsity that can only be realised when carefully examining the work for long enough: thus, maintaining that this is not an honest self-portrait.

The photography and video will often be coupled in a special installation as a display method. I will use objects and materials to create a scene to aid the image. A previous work of mine was a beach scene, which used water, sand, lighting, sound and wall paintings to create the environment. The install worked alongside an indoor billboard image of myself reclining on a beach setting. The beach setting created a scene in which the image was reflected; an elaborate faming device. I will approach this year with similar tactics of installation.

In conclusion, this year will be a year in which I explore the drivers behind society’s narcissistic output online. Through a focus on travel photography I will re-create common tourist images via methods of digital editing. The work will be replicate images found online of people’s holidays. The falsity that exists in the editing process will separate my images from genuine images. In this small gap the images will critique what it is they aim to copy. My practical work will be supported by research on narcissism and the anticipation of travel.