Karl F. Stewart - Searching for Spirituality in a webcam

Karl F. Stewart
Photography

Searching for Spirituality in a webcam

Images of an eye

The images in the series Searching for Spirituality in a Webcam are digitally reconstructed depictions taken from a digital film I am still working on. The point of the series is to reflect on the impact of Transhumanism on today's society.

There is a complexity in artistically discussing and graphically presenting Transhumanism. In commercial films on Transhumanism someone straps on an armored suit and becomes RoboCop or is a time traveler passing through Star Gates. Transitioning from a biological being into a digital entity, though, is much subtler. Nanobots are a major component in Transhumanism. Nanobots, now tending toward the size of Femtometers, 1×10-15, can come in the form of aerosol sprays or are added to medicines and transgenically modified foods. From there the nanobots enter the blood stream where they are dispatched to substitute nerve cells (neurons) or enter the brain and replace neural circuit control functions. Concerning microchips, we could photograph the ever slight scare on a finger of someone chipped. But then again an accidental scratch on a finger may look the same.

The nature of Transhumanism is to replicate a biological life form and then to substitute it with a genetically modified version of the original. We imitate Nature and then we replace it with artificial substitutes. And in all honesty, very few of us could ever notice the difference between a so-called real tree and a genetically modified tree. As a visual image photographing both and putting them side by side would be similar to saying what is the difference between 1 and 1. Conceptually interesting but visually static.

Instead I chose to use what I have termed the eye of the digital matrix to broach the subject of Tranhumanism. Webcam images from around the world were gathered and then reassembled into patterns. The images often reflect the time function of webcams by showing frame by frame movements of the Sun, the rain or of cars passing. If we wish, we could say the images are artifacts of the beginning of the Digital Age. In many ways the webcam was a seemingly innocent meme of the matrix. Later it exponentially propagated into all realms of life.