Experimental Design

Yi Tian had an idea. She wanted to explore the shifting nature of our digital self-image. Her appointment with technicians to build a mould of her head became the day lockdown began. She had ordered a chest freezer for her apartment, in which to develop and freeze a photographic image of her face suspended in water in the mould. This became central to her living space during lockdown but proved too small for the job. She was stuck. As it has been for every graduate this year, Covid-19 threw Yi’s plans into turmoil.

As we have all had to, Yi persevered to find new ways of working from home. On day 7 her local corner shop relented and gave her one night in which to use their freezer. The photographs of Yi’s self-portrait frozen and wedged between pizzas in her local shop indicate the struggles she has been through. The video of her frozen work melting, and the photograph of herself falling from the head-shaped mould and ice in pieces, seems a metaphor for our current predicament.

This is an invitation to explore our pathway and look for other such metaphors and representations of our current lives within the work.