How Not To Be Seen

Hito Steyerl's How Not To Be Seen is like nothing I have ever seen before. It is a satirical short film in which Steyerl uses the method of instructional videos in a way that does not make much sense. Typically, instructional videos are meant to be simple and clear. This film is the complete opposite of that. Steyerl uses an abundance of signs to convey digital art, such as the green screen or the surface on which she keys images. But the most intriguing sign she uses is herself. The female figure she represents is perhaps the most memorable part of the film, as her face is really the only one we see. This is especially because she looks straight into the camera, directly at us, which is typically a striking image when that person is not the one speaking to us.

Attempting to understand every aspect of this film would be a headache and a half. So, here is what I've gathered from it in terms of what Steyerl attempted to signify. Steyerl is perhaps trying to make a statement about how little we, as everyday users of tech, understand technology. This is shown when she speaks about how if we can fit in one pixel, we can disappear. What does that even mean? My interpretation is that she is trying to emphasize how ridiculous visual art is at this point, that we begin to lose track of what we create and where it goes. The internet is just too complex, and beginning to look at how many tiny, tiny pieces it is made up of is almost impossible to wrap your head around.

This brings into conversation the topic of culture surveillance. Maybe it is not explicitly what Steyerl wanted to touch on, but when the complication of pixels, technology and visual arts come into the conversation, this is no doubt an issue of importance. I would like to believe that Steyerl is ridiculing how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of the wide web. Once we begin to utilize the sources put in front of us, such as the internet, we no longer own the information we provided. We unknowingly give up parts of ourselves with every little web search.

Lastly, I want to touch on the general idea of the film in the first place, which is a list of ways to become invisible. A lot, if not all, of the ways Steyerl states are impossible in reality. They are all geared towards how to become invisible on a screen -- some literally, others metaphorically. This is perhaps to show that the medium of visual art is insanely manipulative, to a point it maybe should not be. Steyerl seems to not be a fan of how easy it is to pretend like an image is something it's not, which is why she goes to extreme lengths to emphasize in how many ways it is possible.