In the online cloud-based image gallery, digital images are like an endless torrent and intangible mass production, waiting for users to download and organize them into another subjective possibility. In this pristine and docile pool of image materials, content becomes signs within the system, pure signs. At this point, their real function is merely instrumental, devoid of presence or historical context. Through remote control, manipulation, storage, calculation, and sculpting, images become a new narrative engine, liberating the functionality of content.
Artist Chuang Pei-Xin accidentally came across an image of a middle-aged Caucasian man on the stock image website. His gaze fixed in the distance, his mouth slightly upturned, and the background resembling a natural setting, he appeared to be smiling at something beyond the image. Such plastic smiles are ubiquitous in online image repositories, where the image provides no clues about the person but is accompanied by a set of keywords such as attractive, catalog, dark, edges, adaptation, shimmering, hair, handsome, cheerful, sunny, regarded, trim... These keywords seem to become his identity within the stock image ecosystem, awaiting payment for download, allowing the image to materialize like malleable clay, under the conditions of message sculpting.
Chuang Pei-Xin paid $1.98 to download this image, thereby obtaining the interpretive and usage rights to it. As such, the artist named it David. Additionally, he handed over this image of David to a music production store in the online e-commerce platform Taobao, requesting them to write lyrics and compose a theme song exclusively for David.