TheLastStraw
Above: TheLastStraw #1. Click to view larger image.
TheLastStraw (2021–2023) is a post-photographic work that surveys the understanding of the term straw in culture at large. The work consists of a ‘bot’, a data-harvesting application, that searches the web daily for photographs of straw taken by others, indexed in the public domain and retrieved via an internet search engine. It uses an AI generative adversarial network (GAN) classifier to visually analyse the found images, calculating the percentage of natural straw in contrast to artificial straw. This serves as an indication of human understanding of what straw means and, in turn, how that reflects ongoing ecological impact. The results, compiled collages of the photographs with result data, are logged on the social media platform Twitter as an ongoing photographic/performative work, which runs until the natural straw reading reaches 0% or 100%.
By tracking images of straw, one simple natural material, through how it is ‘pictured’ online on a mass scale the work in a manner visualises the progression of the anthropocene; how humanity’s understanding of straw as a natural material is diminishing and, as a result, the well-known idiom of the last straw becomes reality. The system that generates the photographic collages demonstrates a system of feedback in culture where human understanding and ecological impact inform each other. The work, which ran for more than two years before being deactivated when Twitter was bought out and rebranded as X, generated a series of seven hundred and forty images in total.
Above: TheLastStraw on Twitter. Click to view additional images.
All images used in TheLastStraw are licensed under creative commons.