Ayesha Saeed

The Psychogeography of the The Right Thumb is a new body of work about examining and interpreting one single image; it is the scan of my own right thumb print. It’s showing you a privileged view of being in the photograph/scan/ biometric image (whatever you may call it) that represents me in many digital systems around the world.

The photographs raise more questions rather than presenting resolved opinions or facts. It makes you think about identity, authority, surveillance , consent and the digital image. The code works as a metaphor in the work, the image that is the representation of the human code is represented in a form of a man made code to communicate with machines (hex code) in order to create another image that is the self portrait of being in today's time whether you understand the code or not.

The photographs that were created through the objective and logical approach towards the process of understanding that thumb print, ended up being a very personal journey once realised that it is disclosing itself. They show newly generated geological, or topographical landscapes which describes the internal space. It is a psychogeography of a personal data set. The exposing and encrypting aspects are equally important of myself, within myself. The realisation that such a simple indexical way of making an image leaves one with a prodigious amount of habitat to work in just amazes me. This series of work is an attempt to give a glimpse of what we do not perceive.