50th Anniversary of Our Digital Identites
50 years ago, in late 1971, Ray Tomlinson (1941-2016) managed to send an e-mail over a network to a specific user. He used the @ symbol to define which user the e-mail should be sent. The symbol, which was first encountered in ancient texts and later used as a commercial sign, was used this time to connect the username and address. It thus became a symbol that defines who we are and where we are in networks.
Our digital identities, which take place in our lives as an alternative aspect of self-identification, have formed a usual part of our selves for many of us today, after half a century of experience of our existence in networks. In addition to the developments of digital in our daily lives, it has also been observed that it has become a focal point with academic approaches that sometimes include praise and sometimes criticism, art productions and even brand communication studies.
In addition, our position in the network has gained a universal position regardless of geographical conditions. With this change in perception, when we communicate by providing access to many regions of the world at the same time, the problematics of language, culture and identity have begun to deconstruct; abolished borders. In addition to the deconstruction of language in the postmodern era, the distinctions of language, culture and identity within themselves have become unclear due to reasons such as pluralism, globalization, hybrid culture, virtuality, digitalization and the questioning of reality. We have started to discover our own digital identities through the dialogues we established in this new multicultural, polyphonic and multilingual environment.
While contemporary theorists and artists have been questioning this uncertainty environment with their works, on the other hand, with the advancement of technology, more and more examples have been encountered in which art followed a common program with technology and diversified its productions with new techniques, starting from an interdisciplinary form of expression. With the idea of contemporary art, the phenomenon of art has begun to be evaluated in a wider range. Digital art, which forms an important part of this spectrum, has taken its place in the art environment especially after the 2000s, as a field consisting of interdisciplinary forms of expression with subheadings and bringing together engineering, statistics, communication, philosophy, psychology and many other sciences.
In the 50th Anniversary of the @ sign, as Maltepe University Visual Communication Design Department in our Çizgitsin Digital Gallery, we would like to organize an online exhibition within the scope of digital art.