Artist Commits 'Digital Suicide' to Produce Nearly 1,000 Drawings

Liam Scully reinterpreted five years of Facebook history into drawings.

March 7, 2016, 5:35pm

Hello Queen, 2015. By Liam Scully. Image courtesy of Liam Scully.

An unlikely funeral is taking place at London’s Union Gallery, chronicling the online life of artist Liam Scully from 2008 - 2013. Sparked by the revelations of Edward Snowden in 2013, Scully, who’s very much alive, decided to commit Digital Suicide—taking himself off Facebook and using the years of compiled data to produce nearly 1,000 drawings. “This is every single photograph that I’ve ever posted on Facebook,” Scully tells The Creators Project. “The idea is to reclaim myself into a physical means.”

When removing an account from Facebook, an option is given to download all personal data into a single zip file, from posts and videos, to chat conversations and pokes. Having spent five years using the site primarily for art discovery and promotion, Scully embarked on reinterpreting his Facebook life onto pen and paper.

Hillary Go Again, 2015 by Liam Scully. Image courtesy of Liam Scully.

“It bears very little relation to the photograph which you would have seen,” explains Scully, who looked at his Facebook photographs on screen before drawing each one onto ECG paper—the type used for heart monitoring in hospitals. “I’m changing it by making it into a painting, a drawing or a scribble. It’s also got my written commentary. So there’s lots of layers created.”

Hidden between HTML code, thousands of Scully’s Facebook conversations are printed onto each drawing— a piece taking him anywhere between 1 and 50 minutes to create. Conducting the work over a year, the result is an eclectic mix of reframed memories, from Scully’s previous work and when he met his wife, to more global moments like the 2011 London riots or Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. Pulling only his Facebook use as inspiration, other drawings were less astute. “There were 20 images of gingerbread men that I had made one Christmas,” says Scully. “Having to draw that again and again at different angles was extremely tiresome.”

A Digital Suicide, 2015. By Liam Scully. Hand bound by Book Works, London. Image Courtesy of Liam Scully.

Documenting Scully’s Facebook life, 390 of the drawings hang in Union, with an obituary slideshow and matching soundtrack playing through the entire collection of his years online. His work has also been made into a heavy book, a tangible object that can be touched and engaged with.

While the process was both emotionally and physically draining—Scully reliving five years of his life—he hopes it will start a conversation much like Snowden did. “This is also a way of engaging people with the amount of information that’s put up unconsciously on Facebook or any kind of digital media,” he says. “You’re confronted with these drawings and the sheer amount of them, hopefully that will overwhelm people. That tiny zip file is actually massive. This is a way of exploding the digital file into physical media.”

Scully is now back on Facebook—more aware of what he posts.

A Digital Suicide, (Cheryl Cole Dancing at the Brits, Gosh spread) 2015. By Liam Scully. Hand bound by Book Works, London. Image Courtesy of Liam Scully.