This project explores the idea of seeing how my identity can be manipulated and interpreted differently by people I know; going further, how small deviations can resonate into the crowd and become significant, though they were originally negligible.
I started by drawing a simple self portrait, sent the picture to one of my friends, and asked her to draw in response. After receiving her drawing, I sent that picture to another friend of mine and asked for another drawing. To make this process more controllable, I gave them the following instructions:
- Tell me your interpretation of the drawing that I sent you.
- Make another drawing of this interpretation; your drawing does not have to look similar to the one that I sent you.
- Finish the drawing in one stroke.
I repeated this process 12 times, and my picture was already fairly distorted by then. I included their interpretations as well as their drawings accordingly in the video. A notable point is that many of them chose to draw in similar fashions, which may reflect our tendency to follow the precedents.