Human Collage
Overall, the three collages revolve around the idea of views; views can be from gazes by passing people on the street to views on the internet through digital devices. With the human collage, the type of view in focus are physical views; this can be physical gazes and attention gained without the help of technology. The central figure of the human collage is of a woman to bring attention to unwanted stares and gazes many women may receive in the public. Some gazes feel stronger and more intense than others while many come from places the figure does not know.
The figure under watch is a woman built from one of the ladies from the Marble Statue Group of the Three Graces and a portrait of Lee Miller by Man Ray; the choice of placing the two artworks together is to present the figure as beautiful and perfect. To emphasize the age old practice of people watching and to also emphasize the setting of the collage, the majority of the human collage is void of color (or mainly grayscale). Within the grayscale piece, there are small cut outs that are a bit more colored to help them stand out from the rest; this is scene with the eyeballs and eyes scattered throughout the collage to bring out the inescapable atmosphere os gazes and stares from the figure's surroundings.
Machine Collage
In the center of the triptych is the machine collage. Rather than representing the idea of views, the machine collage focuses on the introduction of technology (or the machine) to humans; a force that will influence the future and the way people watch others. The central figure of the machine collage is not of a woman, but is the military airplane dropping revolutionary communicating devices to the world. Unlike the human and hybrid, the machine is a piece that represents transition and is the connecting piece of the whole triptych.
To show a transition from traditional to digital, the machine collage is half grayscale and half highly pigmented with bright, neon-like colors. As mentioned before, the choice to use grayscale is to represent the past; the past before the introduction of technology. The highly pigmented bottom portion of the canvas represents the future where everything in the world become digital. There is a gradient filter from the bottom to the top of the canvas to further emphasize the transition of past to future. The placement and drop of important subjects in the machine collage is influenced by many of the photomontage techiniques used by Aleksandr Rodchenko.
Hybrid Collage
The hybrid, unlike the human and the machinem is completely in color and has little grayscale images. Many of the colors in the hybrid are highly saturated (some close to neon colors) to emphasize the idea that viewers are no longer looking at the past but are now looking at the digital future. There are no longer physical eyes staring at the central figure. Instead, the subject is now under constant stares from having to be in a digital world where privacy no longer exists. Patches of glitches found throughout the collage is what can remind viewers that the collage is a mix of both human and machine; the merge of the two is not necessarily perfect/ideal and is one that can glitch up at times.
When it comes to technique, the composition of the hybrid is almost a reflection of the human collage; the saturated female marble statue is placed on the left side of the canvas with flipped buildings from the background of the human collage. Along with high color saturation, the background is distorted to appear wavy, unreal, and digital to further bring out the hybrid's setting in the digital world. The addition of distortion and raised color saturation to buildings resembling ones found in the human collage is what presents the merge of human and machine. To further emphasize the mix of human and machine, there are patches of glitches found throughout the hybrid piece.
