Text-based art: I Instagram therefore I am.

A piece of text based art featuring the words “I Instagram therefore I am”.

The wording is taken from René Descartes famous saying “I think therefore I am”, or, as he actually said, “cogito ergo sum” . My wording is based on the observation of the widespread modern need for some people to validate their existence by posting on Instagram to the extent that if they don’t post they feel that they don’t exist.

This modern tendency to photograph everything and to post to platforms such as Instagram is a supercharged version of a tendency that has existed for a very long time (perhaps since the dawn of humanity). It’s just that before the digital age photographs had to be taken sparingly due to the price of film. And before the invention of photography the idea of drawing or painting every minor life event was just too impractical to contemplate.

The layout of the text in this piece places the letters in “I am” directly below the same letters in the top line. The yawning gap between the “I” and the “am” is meant to symbolise the void that can exist in some people’s lives when they aren’t plugged in to the internet.