DoomScroll

2023, print & video series

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.

Queer time and the fuzzy representations of time play a key part in the work. Whether that be the rendering of time through slit scan, the strange sense of losing time when enacting the doomscrolling performance or the 7 months it took to render the video on my outdated GPU computer.

The abstract, generative drawings with light convert time wasted on Instagram into something sublime. 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.