"Gay Under Glass", "TinderFlick", "Tough Guy / Big Red X", "A Handsome Man"

BACKGROUND The show "Radicalism" intended to raise "important questions around the politics of queer identity in the early 21st century. Does identity still matter in our understanding of queerness? Where are the boundaries that limit discourses of queerness in our contemporary culture? Is queerness still linked to radicalism in any way?" (Pettifer, 2014). CONTRIBUTION My own contribution involved a critique of (gay) online dating apps such as Grindr and Tinder in a series of digital artworks. It explored how dating apps produce increasingly fixed digital representations of sexualized bodies online. "TinderFlick" and "Gay Under Glass" were iPad apps on one iPad screen. In these two works users interacted by swiping and manipulating bodies with their finger, connecting the idea of the reductive judgment of sexualized bodies to the swipe gestures of glass interfaces. In "TinderFlick" users can swipe an onslaught of bodies into the "yes" or "no" pile, just like the processes users can go through when judging the profiles of suitors online. In "Gay Under Glass" users can manipulate a male body around under the screen, alluding to the perception of control users have over others where bodies are presented as objects online. "Tough Guy / Big Red X" sees this process highlighted by a user blocking every user, one by one, in their area; a mechanized, defensive and masculine process. "A Handsome Man" is a print that was made from 3D assets during the production of the iPad app which caricatures and distends the sexual focus of the concerned dating apps. SIGNIFICANCE The works were well publicised as part of Midsumma Queer Festival and Radicalism was reviewed in many places including Gay News Network and Art Review. Radicalism was a large survey of Australian artists working with contemporary queer identity including Eric Bridgeman, Brown Council, Georgia Hutchison, Christopher Sciuto, Salote Tawale, Adele Varcoe, Sam Wallman and William Yang.