imother: Creating in Chaos, Living with Screens

The body of work presented within this document is wide-ranging, sometimes performative, material based or ephemeral. Although I discuss my use of traditional media like painting, drawing and video, I also describe how I expanded the very notion of the ‘tool’ for making art by working with domestic objects. At the heart of my practice is the evolution of my children as ‘cooperators’ and finally, a re-making of myself into a ‘cyborg-artist-mother,’ an alter-ego who I call imother. My research explores the relationship between humans and technology through the lens of my concerns as a parent. This is within the context of the significant changes occurring in the ontology of social machine learning which is fuelled by the development of highly controversial, albeit effective algorithms that allow social media applications (and others developed to share media) to exploit our highly consumptive human behaviour. This thesis does not endorse a luddite politics. Instead, I describe how my practice evolved from painting into an inquiry about connectivity — a connectivity between my art practice and parenting and during the recent Covid-19 pandemic more widely, realizing the importance of creating a ‘cyborg-artist-parent’ community. Throughout my discussion, I draw attention to the problems I see emerging from my children’s dependence on digital technology, social media and apps for entertainment and play. My discussion therefore hones in on how I ‘queered’ the space of play through my art practice, first through the medium of painting, and then evolving into interventions in online gaming.