Say What You Really Mean with Downloadable Cindy Sherman Emoticons

As the world becomes increas­ing­ly depen­dent on vir­tu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the poten­tial for mis­un­der­stand­ing is ever present. I resist­ed the use of emoti­cons and stick­ers at first. They struck me as the pic­to­r­i­al equiv­a­lent of LOL. If that’s the best you can man­age, why try at all?

I’ve since reversed my posi­tion. Sev­er­al things con­tributed to this change in atti­tude:

• The peace of mind that comes from any kind of con­fir­ma­tion that one’s mes­sage has indeed been received.

• The unsup­port­ably terse com­mu­ni­ca­tion style of a col­league. Whether inten­tion­al or not, his mono­syl­lab­ic replies to my flur­ry of texts and emails seemed to indi­cate dis­dain… for me! Hey Buster, I’m busy too…

• My dis­cov­ery that my phone’s built-in emo­ji vocab­u­lary includ­ed an alien, a demon­ic Nama­hage, and a friend­ly look­ing pile of poo.

By curat­ing my emo­tions and Face­book stick­ers care­ful­ly, I’ve cob­bled togeth­er a visu­al short­hand vocab­u­lary that works for me. It’s a mat­ter of self respect. (And self preser­va­tion. My wardrobe’s already run­ning afoul of the Secret Inter­net Police. Why give them ammo to accuse me of unseem­ly cling­ing to a long gone stick­er-obsessed girl­hood?)

If you think I’m over­think­ing this, you like­ly won’t be inter­est­ed in down­load­ing artist Hyo Hong’s Cindy Sher­man-icons for your per­son­al use.

Or maybe they’re exact­ly what you’ve been wait­ing for, you old art snob, you!

Either way… enjoy!

The Sher­man-icons are a log­i­cal exten­sion of oth­er Hong projects that play with per­cep­tions of non-face-to-face inter­ac­tions, includ­ing the Upside Down Face­book Page, the New York Taxi Guest­book, and Hand-Writ­ten Face­book Com­ment.

If the pur­pose of an emoti­con is to con­vey a cer­tain feel­ing or atti­tude on the part of the respon­dent, the chameleon­ic Sher­man is well suit­ed to car­ry the bur­den. The pho­tog­ra­ph­er has served as her own mod­el for four decades worth of por­traits. She has embod­ied such arche­types as house­wife, pros­ti­tute, dancer, actress, damsel in dis­tress, and socialite. Her pur­suit of cer­tain truths often leads her to embrace the grotesque. Her will­ing­ness to look like hell in the ser­vice of her art con­tin­ues to shock and some­times offend. (Let’s just say my late moth­er-in-law was not a fan.)

How won­der­ful that this rad­i­cal artist’s work is now avail­able to you in a form that may prove every bit as use­ful as a gift shop tote bag or umbrel­la.

Feel­ing beat­en down by life?

Sus­pi­cious of another’s motives?

Hope­ful in a sit­u­a­tion where hopes are almost cer­tain to be dashed?

Do you real­ly want to depend on a car­toon smi­ley face to get that across for you? (See below.)

No guar­an­tee that Sher­man-icon users’ impuls­es will be cor­rect­ly inter­pret­ed on the receiv­ing end, but it seems a risk worth tak­ing.

Click here for easy 3‑step instruc­tions for down­load­ing and using Cindy Sher­man-icons.

via Its Nice That

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cindy Sher­man and the Art of Imper­son­ation

Stephen Hawk­ing Starts Post­ing on Face­book: Join His Quest to Explain What Makes the Uni­verse Exist

Art for the One Per­cent: 60 Min­utes on the Excess & Hubris of the Inter­na­tion­al Art Mar­ket

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and per­former whose next mis­sion is por­tray­ing a decid­ed­ly Cindy Sher­manesque busi­ness woman in a free read­ing of Lunchtime, Greg Kotis’ play of office romance in the time of the New York Deli Wars.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday