Conall McAteer
Design + Direction | Visual Art


Autographs
2014
Leather Hard-back Publication
18 x 10 x 8cm (500 pages)

Autographs is a book-work that explores the shifting importance of the handwritten signature and personal mark in an increasingly digitised and networked society. The publication is composed of the 500 most downloaded signatures of famous celebrities and noteworthy persons scraped from the internet and sourced via open-content.

As the internet has provided a resource and platform for consuming a wealth of (often) visual information, the historic popular culture trend of collecting autographs of celebrities has been replaced by a desire for camera phone ‘selfies’. The physical artefact superseded by computerised data stored within an invisible network. Through implementation of the digital archive, enabling the curation of an autograph book which wouldn't otherwise be possible.