Eimear Walsh is an upcoming artist who creates digital artefacts and GIF installations. Her work is a direct response to the societal implications of new emerging technologies, with a particular focus on the issue of excessive internet use and addiction. She drew inspiration for her latest installation ‘Virus of the mind’ from Artist Katriona Beales’ work Are We All Addicts Now? Beales work addresses how our interactions get channelled through platforms designed to be addictive. (Beales 2017) Eimear took the idea of the internet being an addictive nature and explored the mental health problems that can form as a result of it. She used data moshing as her primary digital artwork style. In order to achieve data moshing or otherwise known as glitch art, she had to manipulate the composition of the video and apply effects in digital video formats, to create those desired glitch effects. She was able to achieve this goal using the software Microsoft Clipchamp.
For my net art piece, as per the brief I explored the theme of convergence and how the internet affects people’s lives. The approach I took to begin my project was to research what convergence meant and how the internet affects my life. In my net art piece, I wanted to convey the negative affects the internet can have on someone’s mental health and how excess internet use has been linked to a variety of mental health issues like anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. In order to convey these issues within my project, I had to decide which medium I wanted to use, for example, royalty free images and/or royalty free video. I wanted my piece to convey the severity of excess internet use on people. A way I did this was to speed up the royalty free videos to show how life moves fast around us, causing us stress. Focusing primarily on social media, it's all too simple to become entangled in its web. I included three royalty free videos within my final piece to represent the three most common mental health issues caused by excess internet use, anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. The first video represents anxiety. Its fast pace gives a sense of panic and worry. These elements can also be seen when someone with anxiety has a panic attack. The second video I included is of a man looking at a computer screen with an expressionless face. This video represents depression. The colours within the video are used to express the feelings of sadness and melancholy. The third video is a depiction of a person cradling their knees. This video was used to signify the message of low self-esteem. The colour purple within colour theory is used to convey power and ambition. The video employs the colour as a metaphor, symbolically suggesting that the individual does not embody those characteristics. The text used within the GIF shows “Virus of the mind”. The deliberate use of two separate shots, showing the words, serves to mislead the viewer into believing that the GIF's sole purpose was to promote internet usage. In actual fact it’s doing the complete opposite. Having the word ‘virus’ show before ‘of the mind’ misleads the viewer into thinking that they need to check their devices regularly for virus’. In doing so, its enticing people to use their devices excessively. Then ‘of the mind’ reminds the viewer that excessive use of the internet can be harmful and have long term side effects.