Lark Spartin is a Kelowna, BC based digital media artist. This triptych video projection and augmented reality piece explores the evolution of self as mediated by technology, expanding upon the proverb of see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil. Each of the three projected posters manipulates a facial body part to refer to a perceived disembodiment that occurs in our digital interactions.

These interactive AR images are available through scanning the video projection, and directly remark on the social media platforms used to view them. Viewers can witness animated hands reaching out towards them, as if reaching out for connection. When individuals flip to the front camera, a textured mask filter covers their face, promoting ideas of disembodied spectatorship. By presenting the AR filters within popular social media platforms, the viewer is invited to reflect upon the problematic values that have arisen from the use of social media, and consciously recognize what it means to ‘reach out’ for authentic connection. The way the AR is used currently, mostly through the use of filters integrated into social media to morph users’ faces and beyond, amplifies these platforms’ inherent superficiality and has significant effects on individuals’ perceptions of themselves and others. This work aims to invert AR’s typical use and confront these entrenched norms of severe social separation. By exploiting and subverting technology that is used to quite literally filter how we relate to our world, ourselves and one another, this project emphasizes the creative and relational potential of the tools we use daily.

Through taking social relations and their technological mediation as its subject matter, this artwork reveals the effects of the mediating technology that we use and reflects on the role we all have in reshaping it. Through intentional use and understanding of the social structures that it can promote, the commodifying and disembodying effects of our technology can be resisted and deconstructed to shape these platforms as tools for embodiment, expression, connection and relationality.