DoomScroll

2023, print & video series

I waste time scrolling mindlessly on Instagram, spending hours scrolling on my phone in the dark in bed especially when moods are low.

Social media rewires our brains; optimising big-tech companies' engagement algorithms by reducing our social attention, making us increasingly self-conscious, depressed and even sometimes radicalised.

These images are a visual representation of ‘doom-scrolling’, of what happens when wasted time is turned into a physical scroll of time.

‘DoomScroll’ was created using a process called slit-scan, a photographic method for visualising the passing of time across an image. Historically the film strip would be pulled through a special camera which instead of exposing a full image only exposes a thin slit of light. The film is then fed smoothly through the camera exposing the film to whatever action happens through that slit. One example it was historically used for was to capture horses passing a finishing line and to determine the winner. For this work I've written code to extract rows of pixels from video footage to modernise this method of recording time across a photograph.

To create work I performed an endurance challenge. I filmed myself doom-scrolling for 3 hours straight until my phone ran out of charge. Images and faces no longer meant anything and as my back started to ache I began seeing only shapeless forms and colours. These recordings are then turned into long photographic scrolls displaying the passage of time. The resulting series of scrolls visualise small chunks of time from this larger performance.

I’m converting time spent on Instagram into abstract, generative drawings with light. The appropriated data passing through the lens are social media posts which people have chosen to publicly share. Early utopian computer artists used code to make drawing machines. ‘DoomScroll’ advances this process with results mediated through an increasingly corrosive engagement with social media and my iPhone.