Description

The work of Stephen J Scurlock asks what it means to employ digital theories of appearance to renegotiate desire and lack as a new currency of exchange value? How a sense of authenticity reminiscent of pre-digital courting rituals has been replaced with a developer’s ability to archive, copy and reinvent pixelated signature. Scurlock’s Internet ethnography examines digital aesthetics of intimacy and its new forms of romantic capitalism using a series of traditional interactions whereby men banter, take-the-piss and come to terms with the fact that for men in their 50’s certain old fashioned stoic values still offer them a real chance of salvation.

In 1999, (NewsGroupEra 1.0) Internet technicians envisioned an alternative mode of greasing hook-up cultures by suggesting we could join a message- board and send one another polite invitations of interest and as such, replicate the quaint sentiments of lonely-hearts column in local newspapers. We were all sceptical and bemused by the brave few desperate enough to send things called email to potential rapists. By 2006 (WebBrowser 2.0) a generation of eager bloggers, Myspace self-promoters and clumsy webcam experimenters had enthusiastically continued to grapple with a sphere of online life still very distinct from slippery real existence, but with bug-ridden potential. Then, something happened to render the well-defined period of the personal permanently public. A moment when romance moved from self-expression to a system of strangers connecting with capitalist urge and efficiency. Within 15 years homo-sapiens were willing to parade and advertise themselves as they would when selling a second-hand car using an evolutionary range of semantics inconceivable just a few years before. By now there was no doubt that technology and romance had a curious and semiotic adventure to fondle.

During Web 3.0 (circa 2012 – 2016) the population of the planet happily grasped the thumb swiping App maxim, mobile truisms and tipping points of a generation discovering the dank experience of algorithmic alienation, lack and the beyond- ping! This is what you get when half the world is younger than 30, permanently present and feeling hopeless. You get apathy and of course, a romance of absence positioned by new modes of copy, archive and signature.

During Web 3.0 (circa 2012 – 2016) the population of the planet happily grasped the thumb swiping App maxim, mobile truisms and tipping points of a generation discovering the dank experience of algorithmic alienation, lack and the beyond- ping! This is what you get when half the world is younger than 30, permanently present and feeling hopeless. You get apathy and of course, a romance of absence positioned by new modes of copy, archive and signature.

Mankind has now shifted into Archive 4.0 (2017+) an age of fakery and curated identity where exchange capital distends exhibition, diminishes self-reliance, maximises opposition, cheapens solidarity and destroys a sense of scale all for the want of a shag.2 In a game of two halves it feels as though mankind isn’t coming out unscathed, just hopeful.