Marina Planas

SERIES OF RULES: 1) This project will not last more than six months. 2) I will have a weekly appointment. 3) There will be no preconditions in terms of practicing sex; I will leave that in the hands of chance and improvisation. 4) In order to carry out this project I am submitting my will, my ego and my body to a stranger. To keep me safe I will give instructions to the guys I know. The instructions will always be related to the reason why I stopped seeing the previous man. 5) If I feel that I have been disrespected in some way I will proceed to spy and chase the boy who has behaved like an idiot towards me. 6) I will write meticulously about each experience in a small diary, I will take a picture of it and I will hang it on
Instagram. The input will be OkCupid, the output will be Instagram and an installation will be the result. RITUALS: 1) I will always wear red, blue and black. Exactly the same set for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd appointment. 2) My nails will always be painted red. 3) I will prepare a gift for each of the children.

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In Towards a Philosophy of Photography, Flusser claims the correct de-coding of the images in order to create new photographs. In his book he describes how the first ontology of the image was the document; a memorial was the given status to the photo, with all the grammars and representational issues that this definition implied. With digitization, photography ceases to be a document. It has been released from this definition. Nowadays the camera is a device that it’s more about manipulation than representation. Its meaning today is now defined by mathematical and binary codes.

 "Fucking with images" began in New York. I was interested in researching social networking applications, specifically those to meet guys. In order to carry out the research I created a character.


At that time, these types of applications were blooming. When this character gets into the app she realizes that to choose a guy is similar to the process of choosing a meal from a meal, she finds a multiple number of options. Hence the idea of ​​developing a file of boys it was born. Amazing number of selfies was being accumulated in the computer. Photo popularization. The matter was more about the quantium than about the quality of relationships that were being developed.
 

The project explores how new technologies affect our way of reading images, our way of thinking and our way of relating to new media. I was interested in analyzing how the bases of behavior were established through an electronic device, how these types of relationships governed by the device were born. Binary rhetorics are artificial languages. The created is the result of that artificiality. I formulated a robotic and artificial being, without emotion, to influence the issue of identity / digital image, which in general goes more on manipulation than on representation and in which the other is represented in a technical way, throughout  a mathematical language, obscured. I started to meet men. In developing the image of this character I could not avoid the question of the sexual reification of women. Obviously to seduce the boys I had to generate a "sexy" representation, in addition to display women stereotyped behaviors; what a woman is expected to do when provoking the attraction of the other.
 

he fictional character is created in the app is a virtual image that represents a false identity, alienating the real person, emphasizing how we can misinterpret what the images. Flusser points out that we are facing a post-human era that leads us to technological relations governed by the device. In this post-human context the other is represented in a technical way, through a mathematical language, obscured. The application informs the character the guys with whom she has more links in common, and she follows these indications. The superficiality of the psychological tests of these dating pages is considered. After shaping a completely prefabricated identity and submitting to the will of an IPhone, the character behaves robotically following self-imposed instructions.

It thinks over the concept of "I” and how it is influenced by emerging technologies allowing individuals to have an online identity that usually reflects an ideal aspect of themselves. The virtual identity is normally linked to the idea of ​​misrepresentation.

For the investigation of these issues I did not put obstacles when it came to practicing sex. I did not have a single orgasm. Fuck for art. Search the limit. Vulgarization/Popularization of sex.

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I am not going to do this again.

 

In this case, attention is focused on the dating apps and how virtual sex not only complicates but also distorts the division between body, mind and "I". Online there are incorporeal users: the body is no longer needed and the individual can participate separately from the body. Ultimately this is related to a sense of detachment from the identity defined by the physical body.

 

​Wanting to approach the other through technology, the result is a failure. Failure nº.1

Investigate how technologies affect knowledge systems, cognitive issues, personal relationships and emotions is a subject that has always drawn my attention because the tools I use for my artistic  work have always been technological devices(photography, video, computers, printers , monitors ...) When Guttemberg invented the printing press, Heiddeger already reflected on this matter. I was interested in analyzing the enormous weight of the prevailing technological discourse in which we find ourselves today.
 

"After printing, photography is the most powerful weapon given to man for his intellectual development. The mind marvels at the gigantic steps taken by this art in its first 50 years of development and we are sure that if someone stops to think about what they have done and what photography is doing in their lives, they will be amazed at its results " Peter Henry Emerson)

 
 

 

“and I was fucking a man the machine had told me to fuck”

 

   “And I was fucking a man the machine had told me to”

 

    After a while I realized that talking about this issue could not be done from a cold, invented character without emotion. Failure nº. 2: impossibility to follow the rules that I had imposed on myself. I decided then to write about the experiences from the emotions, and I realized that despite relating to each other through  new devices we could not escape from our essence, from our condition of being humans (and thank goodness!). The work questions how the virtual experience can affect one's own emotions, having a significant impact on the relationships through technology. The real and the virtual are confused.

The new social relationships are the result of osmosis between Internet, chats, telephones ... This combination between the real and the virtual displaces social relations to an unprecedented place. The real and the virtual merge and confuse. Each time more real life is transferred to the network and vice versa: more and more virtual life is transferred to reality. (Maldonado 1992, Baudrillard, 1996)

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The emotional aspect is presented in an analogical way by means of a meticulous writing work, but the Mediterranean thought based on a linear structure of the history discourse is completely out of date nowadays,: so the writings are photographed, turned into binary codes and uploaded to the network in the form of memory. The photographs of the newspaper are also added to the book.
 

There is a lot of erotic literature in this diary. There is little tradition of writing about subject among women. Historically it has been criticized as vulgar and incorrect for women to treat these matters while the male gender has been able to speak freely. I was interested in trying to normalize this situation. It was not possible. I was harassed by my tutor; he made strange gestures, like unbuckling his belt or unzipping his zipper. Apparently he thought he was trying to seduce him. Today we still cannot treat these contents freely without suffering this kind of inconvenience. At the end of the book a writing explaining the incident is added, written as when I had to denounce it. There are also reports of post-traumatic stress that this caused me.

 

   Getting back to the images, I realized that by meeting these guys, some magic (or all) was lost during the process. It had nothing to do with meeting randomly a guy in a bar. The mystery vanished. All this situation could only be compared to the birth of digital photographs; something rushed for a fast and fierce society, that seeks  immediate results, opposed to the analogical images characterized by the magic of the slow appearance, waiting to see the results, waiting, let's say, to generate a desire.

By contrary, meeting up with these guys was almost always a disappointment. Through virtual conversations I often made an ideal image of how they would be. Failure nº. 3

The fact of spying (which means the hunt for the next image) arises from the disenchantment of the encounter, the mismatch between the online experience and the offline one. From this moment on, she becomes a triple slave. Slave of the man she spies on, slave of the iPhone and slave of the image that has been created of herself.

 

      Obviously, I never found love. Failure nº. 4