Have you ever peeked into the rooms of your friends and family members in the evenings and observed how they spend their time in front of screens on mobile phones, laptops, and televisions? Have you paid attention to the portraits that emerge in the otherwise dark rooms due to the illumination from these screens?
Today, no one is truly alone in their own four walls, even at night, as digital media immerse people in a virtual world, serving as their constant companions. Despite the many advantages that modern technology offers, its excessive use has two consequences. On the one hand, it leads to less time spent with other people, resulting in fewer social interactions. Through social media, people get the illusion of being needed, loved, addressed, and entertained. They are presented with feelings of security, social connectedness, and community, while in reality, they experience a silent loneliness. With the advent of the era of Artificial Intelligence, this contradiction appears even more grotesque: people share their most intimate feelings with machines because they cannot find conversation partners in the real world.
On the other hand, humans are losing the ability to actively experience times of solitude, idleness, and silence, which are equally important for their mental well-being, as constant distractions from screens hinder them. The silence has become unbearable for them, as it makes them feel their true existence. The harmonious interplay between nurturing profound social connections and experiencing regenerative solitude is replaced by a constant, monotonous background noise of media.
In the photo series "Discrete," people are photographed in their private atmosphere while surfing the internet, chatting, and watching television, with the screens of digital devices being the sole source of light. With this photo series, I aim to depict the loneliness of people in the light of digital media and shed light on the influence of these technologies on society, particularly in light of a future with "intelligent machines."