Preview
Creation Date
2026
Dimensions
1080 x 1920 pixels
Materials
Digital Materials
Medium
Digital
Project Advisor
Benjamin D. Rhinehart
Year of Graduation
2026
Description
View of the digital website installation "A Room of One's Own."
Rights
Copyright for this work is held by the artist.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
COinS
Artist Statement
This is an inquiry into the “private” spaces of the Internet: hard drives, artwork, personal videos, Notes app thoughts, etc…What you see on this website is a three-dimensional, digital rendering of my bedroom. Drag around to explore and click to see details. You can also use the arrow keys to get up closer to objects. Here are some things you can click: the bed, the images on the walls, the mirror, the books, the desk, the lamp, and so on.
This work aims to disrupt the typical divide between private and public, physical and digital spaces and asks you to question whether these spaces are ever really separate. It places the private, physical space of my bedroom, with all its existing contents, into a digital environment where fragments of my hard drive including videos, images, and thoughts become accessible, clickable, and dissectible. Private thoughts and intimate objects of personal value that were created in digital privacy become public with the click of a few key strokes. Is the feeling of intrusiveness still legitimate given the omnipresence of the Internet, our cultural need for oversharing and the misguided trust we place on technology to be private?
The title pulls from a quote by writer and curator Gene McHugh. In his essay, “The Context of the Digital: A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships,” McHugh writes: “The Internet is a room of one’s own…not an esoteric corner of culture where people come to escape reality and play make-believe. It is reality.” Indeed, in the Internet’s early stages it was hopefully predicted to be a space where binaries and hegemonies could be rejected. Systers, an online cyberfeminist forum started in 1987, sought to use the digital as a “private, safe online forum for women involved in the technical aspects of computing.” The utopian potential for the Internet to provide safe spaces separate from negative aspects of the real world no longer rings as true. In a time where the digital is now an all-consuming part of our lives, it's become a constant disruptor of our privacy and autonomy. However, we’ve come to accept these breaches, or ignore them, because often our livelihoods depend upon it. Virginia Woolf’s text A Room of One’s Own makes the point that for a woman to make money and a livelihood, she must have her own space to express herself. The Internet is the 21st century's room of one’s own, it gives us the ability to express ourselves and have a platform, but at what cost?