RESEARCH

During my Masters studies I was interested in identity and the image - the way we see, perceive, evaluate, assess other people and ourselves. 

This research is not new to me - earlier in my life my job in advertising and marketing and working with fmcg's  formed multiple experiential observation that I later developed during my BA degree studies in Marketing with focus on Consumer Behaviour. 

Behaviour modifying techniques especially when applied to large consumer groups, the work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (Judgements Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, 1974) and other behavioural economists informed and were my main focus of research. The framework was government messages of safety and using fear to shape outcomes. 

From advertising, which is heavily image-dependent, to photography with the accompanying research, my choice of subject in my MA was more than logical - I refocused the lens from the masses of the crowd to the singularity of the individual and the 'self'. 

As I am multilingual and somewhat interested in languages, language constructions, idioms and folklore narratives, one of my first research-based projects was Saudade - linguistics concept deeply routed in Portuguese culture and tradition. By the end of the project I felt the photographic work alone is not sufficient to communicate my personal experiences and this led to the creation of "Bottled Memories" [see video of the artwork not in installation below] - a conceptual work of art that is still in progress. This project also involved mirrors and mirror images. 

Another installation work was Snap Judgments based on the idea that our predatory brains make better assessments of people than our conscious brains. The research behind this project was supported by a study at Stanford University (missing quote and annotation) that showed better perception of images, people and personality traits when the decisions were made with your 'gut'. This installations is unfinished; however, a proposal file can be seen below. 

This progressed to more enquiries in the way we perceive ourselves. At the time SnapChat was taking over and visual communication were replacing verbal communication in a way that was unprecedented. Helped by mobile technologies development and accessibility, images were now a vernacular of an entire generation and the self-portrait was taking a centre stage in this development. 

Everyone was taking selfies and everyone accused everyone else in narcissistic behaviour. I developed a different theory - one where the visual communication of the self was providing an assurance in our identity, a conversational medium and an autobiographical tool. I called these three functions of the self-images the Selfie Trinity. Damásio's idea of the Autobiographical Self and the idea of the mirror image (see above) became the starting point and basis of my research.