Passive Aggression an experimental solo exhibition that considers and reflects on our lived experience as objects of capital. This exhibition explores the reverberations from the merging of physical and virtual life. In particular, the way that new patterns of online consumption [late night or mobile online shopping] have been assimilated into our physical lives, further commercialising our working and living environments.
In 2017 Frost started making and uploading his Wet Unboxing video series. In these videos, products selected from an optimised and urban life were opened by hand in a water-filled tank. These enigmatic and hypnotic videos of hands opening items underwater riffed on the online trend of YouTube unboxing videos, where products are opened and virtually consumed. Within the same space of digital consumption, the Wet Unboxing videos enacted the migration of physical desires into an online space. This work asks, are the new boundaries to consumption limitless?
Echoing the disembodied hands of the Wet Unboxing videos, in Passive Aggression animatronic hands respond to commercial ‘data’ to act out repetitive actions and gestures. Tweets, Instagram stories or Facebook posts made by commercial corporations are converted into a digital and robotic sign language. The data ‘pulling the strings’ is seemingly banal, dumb and passive but together it forms a new language of hand gestures. Focusing at the point where a prosaic digital reality meets the physical, the works in Passive Aggression utilise and devise a privatised language from commercial corporate data and make it public.
List of works
Passive Aggression 1 – 3, 2021
Cast silicone hands, servo motors, PVC tubing, braided fishing line, wood, Raspberry Pi Zero WH, SparkFun Servo pHAT, Adafruit Pio LED and 1A and 3A power supplies, plasters, first aid tape and modified dual monitor stand.
The movement of each finger corresponds to a signal – like/follow/following/posts made/views – pulled from commercial social media accounts (Graze, Red Bull, Lemsip, Nurishment, Belvita, Nivea, Chicago Town Pizza, Seven Seas).
Passive Aggression 4, 2021
Cast Silicone hand, bandage, children’s plasters, printed parcel tape, cardboard boxes and various tools.
Passive Aggression 5, 2021
Ipad covers and lanyards, cold cast resin tablet with iron filings (artificially rusted); Ipad with Wet Unboxing videos (Nivea Shaving Gel, frozen Chicago Town Pizza, Graze snack, Lemsip sachets, Seven Seas Cod Liver Oil, Red Bull, Belvita Biscuits, Nurishment chocolate drink) 2017-2021.
