Hombres Videopoetry Award Finalist: We Are The Device

We Are The Device, is a poetry film which offers an impressionistic glimpse into a future where shifting privacy standards have gone unchecked to the point that it undermines one’s principles of privacy. The hope is that the film may prompt reflection on the rising concerns about privacy in the digital world.

The film shows our citizen going about his daily business finding it progressively difficult to navigate a world increasingly driven by commercial interest into how we live. Visual stimulation reduces imagination and promotes impulsive distraction. He is the target of the digital infrastructure designed to collect and extract information that is used by interested parties to manipulate his choices. 

The device has become omnipresent, unseen, every aspect of our protagonist is being monitored to the point where even his walk becomes an algorithm. It is a dark perspective hung on a menacing soundscape.

I write quickly and instinctively, allowing an interplay between my subconscious and conscious mind until the narrative appears. Writing for me is a very visual experience resulting in vivid imagery which easily translates to film giving the poem another life beyond the page and provides another layer for me to guide the audience’s interpretation of the text. Composing music for my films ties these two elements together, creating a mood that reflects the world in which the poem lives. My work often explores the human experience and the friction between ideals and the status quo. I have an intimate relationship with my art, I measure myself against it and I strive to narrow the space between me and it. (M.N.)

Author bio

Poet and Artist Mark Niehus combines his poetry with digital art, video and music to create outcomes that capture and expand the mood, rhythms and meaning of his writing. Always seeking to discover new ways to apply his experimental ethos to engage audiences and push the boundaries of his art, Mark’s work illuminates and transforms urban environments and internal spaces into captivating visual canvases and poetic soundscapes. 
After spending years abroad, travelling, studying creative writing and working as a new media designer in London, Mark returned to Australia to publish his first book of poems in 2008 and to focus his artistic practice to create high quality artworks integrated with his writing. Over the last 10 years Mark has conceived and delivered an array of poetry films, projection art, street art, illustrations, installations and composed spontaneous poems for the public on his typewriter for Local Government, Arts organisations, festivals and numerous solo exhibitions.

The FINALIST