2024 Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize

Data Composite

Annabelle McEwen

Data Composite, 2024 photograph laser etched wood block printed in plaster 18 x 18 x 2 cm

As technology extracts resources, the body has become a commodified data asset. This work interrogates virtual surveillance by repeatedly filtering the self portrait through social media editing software fabricating a compression artefact. Printing into plaster transposes my visual data into a physicality as an antithesis to the virtual images we consume via the luminosity of screens. My body is atomised and disseminated throughout the ether of the cloud and my legacy is written in data.