Daniel Breen

Limerick School of Art and Design

Project Statement:

Skeuomorphism is a term most often used in graphical user interface design to describe interface objects that mimic their real-world counterparts in how they appear and/or how the user can interact with them. The modern world is dominated by cameras and screens. This marriage of technologies comes together to create a reproduction and translation of the physical world within the digital space. This reproduction of the physical world within the digital landscape is itself a skeuomorph and offers up new photographic potentialities. What does it mean to be human in a digital space?

Skeuomorphs is an exploration of the phenomena Google Street View, more specifically exploring the portraits of individuals found in Google Street View and the blurring of individuals faces and the subsequent creation of unease that comes with focusing on these anonymous portraits as somewhat abstract photographic images. By utilising digital software that mimics analogue image manipulation techniques, these appropriated digital portraits attempt to bridge the past and present of portraiture in photography.

Artist Bio:

Daniel Breen (b. 1996) is a visual artist from Tipperary, Ireland. Primarily concerned with the still image and the medium of photography. Breen's subject matter tends to be metaphysical in nature; namely his personal relationship to time and space, mind and matter. His work utilizes analogue and digital processes simultaneously to create imagery that speaks to the history of photographic processes as well as the contemporary state of the medium.