The Public Self is a series of iterative projects exploring the coexistence of self across physical and digital public space. Derived from correlations that have been found to exist between social media engagement and practices of graffiti and tagging, the project develops within the concepts of public / private, temporality / permanence, place / non-place, authenticity / mendacity and original / copy. The focus of these dichotomies is to examine how our self expression is paradoxically limited and liberated as a result of the differing spatial frameworks of physical and digital public space. This has been achieved through a multi-faceted examination of the Instagram platform, which demonstrates the self transitioning, translating, materialising and amalgamating across physical and digital public space.

 

 

Realised as a four-part series titled The Digitised Self, each of the project outcomes analyse, refine and communicate the various intersections of the theoretical research, which formulate the foundation of the project. This enabled a thorough, multi-dimensional investigation of the public self, resulting in a series of distinct outcomes that also overlap and complement each other, producing an exhaustive, comprehensive and holistic series of artworks.