CAMILA GONZALEZ COREA

IRL is a continuation of my most recent project The Nipple Act.

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The Nipple Act was a piece which acted as a protest within Instagram and evolved through external submissions.

It consisted of an Instagram account which turned photographs of females breasts into images consisting purely of emojis. The intention was to protest against Instagram's sexist terms of use, which allows male nipples to be published on the platform, but bans the posting of female nipples. By transforming images of nipples into a flurry of emojis, these new images where unable to be immediately banned from the platform. The aim of this project was to promote the normalisation and de-fetishisation of the female nipple.

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Though the making of The Nipple Act I started an in depth research on the relationship between gender and the internet, as well as ways in which we imitate our real life behaviours when using web spaces. IRL explores the process of turning a photography into something which consists of something (emojis) which not only exists because of our behavioural needs when using such platforms but also something which is mostly there to act as a representation of our current selves and emotions. This process aims to reflect a kind of translation between real life and the internet.

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Though the use of experimental images and parts of the code used to create The Nipple Act images, IRL aims to act as a bridge which will hopefully lead me into an even more in depth research which, through a feminist lens, will study how we act when on the internet and how much of it reflects our IRL selves.