We might insist that we either do or don’t like the reality of being part of a computer-driven culture, but have we really communicated anything meaningful about how the basic fact of being inside that world impacts on our ability to say something about it? Is it even viable to compare our world with its non-technological mirror-image? Life today offers an entirely man-made world designed to provide for all our needs and keep us continually amused, while the non-man-made environment slips deeper into the realm of the imaginary. We are stuck down a rabbit hole addicted to the instantaneous delivery and receipt of information, only offering transient moments of relief from the ‘everyday’.
Ed Florance’s work comprises digital environments which contain familiar virtual props found on the internet. The subjects are chosen to question the ‘belief systems’ instigated by the proliferation of digital imagery in contemporary culture, imagery in which we are expected to trust that someone exists or that something is true, making fiction appear as fact.
Ed Florance (b. 1995, Birmingham, UK), lives and works in Birmingham.