Burnt Burnt
Juliana Navarro Morales
Burnt Pixels is a proposal that visually explores the contrast between the ephemeral and instantaneous nature of contemporary technology and materials that reflect durability and permanence. It addresses themes such as eye strain resulting from continuous screen exposure, surveillance, the relationship with algorithms, and the individuality of the being who inhabits the network—identified as a user. The proposal intentionally collapses boundaries between the analog and the digital through processes that involve ceramics, photography, archival activation, and image hybridization. This research-creation project stems from Burnt Pixelv: visual Discontinuities and Saturation in the Hyperreal Societ as part of the gradua-
process for the Bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts at the Technological University of Pereira, developed during the Covid-19 pandemic under the direction of Ph.D. Aura Margarita Calle Guerra. It continued years later with postproduction exercises and hybridization of the image archive in a context marked by the proliferation of artificial intelligences.
Burnt Pixel was born as a gesture of resistance against the overabundance of images and visual saturation that characterizes contemporary digital experience. Initially, it explores the fragmentation of vision and the impact of iconic bombardment on the body and psyche, using ceramics as a medium to create tensions around the fleeting and instantaneous nature of technology.
At its core, the work reflects on ocular fatigue caused by prolonged screen exposure and the surveillance imposed on users within virtual environments. The red, burnt eye emerges as a recurring visual motif—rendered through mosaic, a technique historically tied to sacred imagery, here reappropriated to address the excesses of technological stimulation. The pixel is no longer a unit of precision, but a symptom of collapse.
The creative proposal has gone through various postproduction processes of its own archive over time, expanding its visual and conceptual dimensions. In this process, photographs have been hybridized to create GIFs or intervened with text, incorporating personal reflections on the relationship with devices and fragments of my experience as a UX designer.
Sound is also integrated as an additional layer that intensifies the sense of saturation and fragmentation in daily life. Based on urban recordings in spaces of consumption and transit, and with the support of a music producer, a sound piece was created that, through repetition and distortion, evidences sensory immersion in everyday life.
Hybrid Photography
Format | Gift
Variable dimensions
https://www.behance.net/Junnara
“I dropped my personal archive. The hard drive softened, its fragility spilled across the floor.”
Modified photograph
I became pixel from keystrokes, fingers-trembling habit-bound to a square i hated, detested this body obsolete now updated rewrote.desire erased (unnecessary) collapsed from the screen exhausted
I, digit vision.bleached my voice: machine mouth.shout yes, no speak (code)
I compressed I rebooted I restarted I looped
Pxxxl Pxxxx Xxxxx Pixel Pixxl Pxxxl Pxxxx Xxxxx Pixel Pixxl Pxxxl Xxxxx Pxxxx Xxxxx
Pixel Pixxl Pxxxl Xxxxx
Relational practice
Obssesion present future
Yes, I’m a pixel
How does my digital immersion shape my current and projected obsessions?
AI-generated mosaic.