Emoji is all we have

Speaking in pandemic times

With a yellow painted face Roel mimics emoji provided by Unicode

'Emoji is all we have' is a short film reflecting on our current state of digital culture.

While technology is intended to help and support our human shortcomings, this film depicts a reversed hierarchy between man and machine. The man adapts to the dictating machine.
It thematises the safe harbour an emoji can be. Emotions are served to us as a binary unicode, stripped from doubt and complex layers. The struggling, imperfect human with its multilayered, subtle, facial expressions are mapped onto perfectly defined, simplified and frictionless icons.

The recent pandemic has forced many of us to lead an even more digital life. Available technology defines the possibility space and the nature of our communication, now physical contact often is not allowed. We are placing an increasing amount of surfaces, screens and interfaces between ourselves and the ones we are communicating with. Those surfaces are effectively blocking covid, but as a side effect they also affect our emotional sensation.

  • Part of
    Window of the world St. Moritz,
    Zwitserland,
    14.8. – 27.9.2020
  • Part of
    DA Z Digital Art Zürich,
    Zwitserland,
    28.10. – 1.11.2020

Credits

  • Direction
    Luna Maurer
    & Roel Wouters
  • Emoji face
    Roel Wouters
  • Camera
    Luna Maurer
  • Music
    Eardeer,
    Liezen3
  • Production
    Moniker