Vanitas Overdrive

Starting from the classic vanitas still life idea I decided to create one of vague cyberpunk inspiration. I applied the classic symbolism to new objects and brought them closer to traditional ones creating a recognizable and new mix. The disconnected headphones replace mute instruments, the empty helmet replaces the skull, the sci-fi novels replace poems and sheet music. The fruit, the drape and the glass are taken from classical symbolism, but their rendering is artificial and imprecise as a bad hologram. In some still life vanitas, some symbols refer to spirituality. I decided to include tarot cards (specifically two major arcana "the tower" and "the temperance") and the book "The I Ching". Referring to a spirituality linked to the knowledge of the self and the future more than to the cult of divinity. If a vanitas is a symbolic work of art showing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, it is necessary to add an important concept true to the medium in which this work was created: obsolescence. In my compositional technique, I decided to add a series of shots taken with different devices, all older than my camera to make the image in some places noisier / pixelated/ inaccurate. Because if life and pleasures are insubstantial in eternal time, technology becomes so too, faster.