“In Front, Leishman carves out a dystopian meditation on the dynamics of social media, the question of agency, and the power of social surveillance on identity.” Davin Heckman
Front (2014) is a commissioned piece of critical practice (by competition) developed as part of the Scottish Government, New Media Scotland Alt-W and NHS 24’s Project Ginsberg with a goal to start a conversation around young persons’ mental health and wellbeing. Donna’s contribution chose to focus on female experiences within social media. Narrative, parody and multimodality were used as a creative new approach to highlight for the user the pressing contemporary issues of social media privacy, voyeurism and public image. Front uses a faux-Facebook interface that innovatively mimics the immersive, interaction rich promise of social media whilst reminding users of what is often freely given up. Through its unique adaptation of Ovid’s Daphne and Apollo narrative it places the risk of soliciting unwanted attention/desires into a deeper cultural context.
This project has been shared through a month long exhibition: Alt-W showcase, Edinburgh Art Festival 2014, Evolution House (Aug 1st - Sat 30 Aug). Visitor number: 2964. It was also peer selected in the group exhibition “Interventions: Engaging the Body Politic.” in US, Bergen, Norway. This exhibition was part of the Electronic Literature Organization 2015 Conference. The goals and methods of this work we discussed in“The Metamorphoses Of Front As A Narrative Told Through Social Media Interface: A Conversation With Donna Leishman” an interview published in full in the book Digital Imaginary the Emerging Shapes of Literary, Cinematic, and Database Art, Bloomsbury (Nov 2019) ISBN: 9781501347566.
Full archive update coming soon, please meanwhile click to access a walkthrough of the project: https://vimeo.com/user118962085