Gays Under Glass

Gay dating apps and the affect-image

Tom Penney
School of Media and Communication
RMIT University

Note:
This version of this piece of writing is not yet published. A similar version can be found under
the citation below (this version is a bit longer):

Penney, T, 2014 “Bodies Under Glass: Gay dating Apps and the Affect-Image” in
Green, L and Pink, S (eds) Media International Australia, 153, University of
Queensland

A more succinct article that followed on from, and was written after this one, is at this link:

http://dpi.studioxx.org/en/no/32-queer-networks/faceism-and-fascism-gay-online-
dating

For further developments see my soon-to-be completed PhD dissertation on the topic.

Abstract:
There is a rise in the popularity of gay dating apps for smartphones that depict bodies under the
glass of screens. The application Grindr is one such system, as well as Hornet, Scruff, Jack’d
and many others. Recent literature draws attention to how Grindr perpetuates reductive
stereotypes fetishized and consumed by a narcissistic homosexual market. Through Giles
Deleuze’s concept of affection-image, I think through how images of bodies on these apps are
transmitting or receiving affect. I then discuss some of my own artwork in light of this inquiry; in
which I particularly consider the role of judgmental swipe-gestures and how they parallel the
treatment of individuals’ bodies as objects; disposable, manipulable and exchangeable. Through
this artwork and its discussion I aim to extend critical discourse concerning the treatment and
reception of other subjects in gay online communities, as well as the examination of bodies,
fetish, and sexuality by artists of contemporary media more generally.
Figure 0: “Bodies Under Glass” 2013, Tom Penney

In her 1990s artworks, British artist Jenny Saville presented a defiant exploration of the
glassy surfaces that objectify bodies, particularly concerning the representation of women in
media, shop windows, television screens and shiny magazine pages. In her large-scale
photographic the series “Closed Contact” (1995-6), Saville presses her body directly against a
glass surface as if challenging it to contain her (Saville and Luchford, 1995-6). Today, any
person who chooses to have a profile on an internet site has the privilege of being presented
beneath the shiny glass surfaces of mobile smartphones and computer screens. We all
contribute to how we see our bodies; a role previously reserved for celebrities, supermodels and
the stylists and editors who dictate their image. Where better to see these bodies-under-glass in
proliferation than on dating websites? In this chapter I discuss bodies-under-glass via the lens of
smartphone dating apps for gay men. These include Grindr, Jack’d, Hornet, Scruff, Recon and
many more. While a great deal of research around these apps has focused on health, especially
how such apps affect the distribution of HIV, or in cultural studies research into ideas of
community, individual performativity or race, this paper takes an artistic practice-based research
approach. I initially discuss Deleuze’s concepts of affect, moving then to explore concerns about
smartphone dating apps through visual artworks, specifically those present at the “Radicalism”
show in Melbourne’s Substation Gallery, curated by Drew Pettifer. My engagement with these
apps as a heavy user informed my production of a series of artworks testing the relationship
between bodies, users and glass interfaces through finger-based swipe gestures.

Bodies and the Glass Interface

Brett Victor (2011) calls the current state of interaction design “Images-under-glass”.
Victor laments that interaction design, indeed “the future of interaction design” (ibid) is limited to
the gestures made by hands on glass surfaces, and that the two major functions of hands
(feeling and manipulating) are completely underutilized in current state-of-the-art. I would
propose that the effect of this has been to “numb” interaction with elements under glass
surfaces, which to our discussion involves the human body, or the human-body-as-face. We can
refer to this kind of numbness in terms of narcissism; a closed circuitry. In the structure of such
circuitry, I am are here invoking McLuhan’s definition of narcissism which involves "the Greek
word ‘narcosis’, or numbness […as] the etymological root shared by the words ‘narcotics’ and
‘narcissism’.” This signifies “The attempt to "become a closed system” resulting “[…] in a
freezing-out of stimuli.” (Fisher, nd). Narcissism, involving a “Self-centredness arising from
failure to distinguish the self from external objects…” (OED, 2013) for Baudrillard becomes
“delimited”, for it can be reflected back to the narcissist through any object. As a result of ‘seeing
themselves in all things’, Baudrillard’s take on the narcissist involves their “…inability to detach
a delimited self from the circuit” (Fisher, nd). As such, this becomes a confusion between
subject and object; an inability to discern between the two. Bodies as presented under glass
surfaces become manipulable, non-visceral, gaze-oriented visual bodies, for consumption as
objects by narcissists through the personal screen. The commanding fingers of these users rub
numb, as if calloused, upon the surface of visual bodies.

The consumption of bodies here is however two-way and works off a mutually shared
narcissism that most users will probably take for granted. Users are set up by the very interface
to operate narcissistically and to think about themselves and what “they want”. It is the very
setup of the experience and affordance of the interface, being delivered through a personal
screen as if “for” the user that produces narcissistic and defensive behaviour. One must
remember that at every moment one is browsing through images of other people, that we are
also one other image in the screen of some other person who is also skimming over us,
checking out our face or perhaps even blocking us before we have had a chance to engage in a
chat. Baudrillard continues, raising the “vitrified exacerbation of the body, of vitrified
exacerbation of genitalia, of an empty space where nothing takes place and which nonetheless
fills our vision” (Baudrillard, 1987, p.34) as a result of media spectacle. In the case of the app
Grindr (and others) we are faced with a constantly updating, user-produced media spectacle
involving both bodies and genitalia. The presentations of gay maleness proliferating within
Grindr are not the products of Grindr necessarily, but the products of gay males using the app.
Claims of essentialisation have been made in literature surrounding gay online dating, such as
in the work of Ben Light who claims of the system “Gaydar.co.uk” that:

Individuals write a version of themselves and of this gay community into being. However,
because of the desire to commodify ‘the difference’ that is gay, predominantly white
men, online and offline, such inscriptions become monolithic caricatures that are
obdurate and enrol even those who do not participate in such arrangements at all or only
by proxy” (Light et al, 2009)

The standard on Grindr is to participate in such arrangements by taking a selfie of

oneself and posting it to the profile space. Lacanian thought tells us that an identity is formed
when a child recognises its own reflection in the mirror; the mirror's representation of the body
turns it into an object to be compared against other objects of language (Lacan, 1949, pp.503) If
“media images act as Lacanian mirrors that cause identity formations to be ideologically laden”
(Peretti, 1997), then the app Grindr allows the user to participate as an objectified media image.
One's own image on the screen,or selfie-as-mirror, is displayed alongside others in the Grindr
interface as a square in the top left corner, comparable to others around it. Baudrillard echoes
out again: “While here everything is of equal visibility, everything shares the same shallow
space” (Baudrillard, 1987, p.33). Peretti (1997) further asserts that, in Lacanian terms,
consumer capitalism needs subjects who continually re-enact the infantile drama of mirror stage
identifications in order to maintain productivity. The speed of the app, its constant update of
profiles and their immediate proximity to each other, leads subjects to constantly question their
participating image. This is not a seasonal change of fashions but a minute-by-minute update of
images. As soon as the external self is consolidated by a single picture, it is immediately
threatened again when compared against to a context of other profile images. Is one displaying
the right image, encoding the correct type of person that in turn attracts the right types of
people? By participating this way, through the portrayal of many selves, one feeds Grindr the
images that construct its types through a positive feedback loop; a mirror, and each individual
becomes an object to be consumed.

Kane Race describes Grindr as providing an appropriate service insofar as it deals in the
market of producing sexual encounters or “hook ups” (Race, 2014), but in terms of providing
solutions to problems of intimacy, loneliness, or even more innocently seeking “like-minded”
others in the local area (as is the claimed original intention of the app), Grindr and other apps
may not suffice. One might rather look to OkCupid or a more “serious” dating website for the
complicated question-based matching algorithms provided, as those are in the business of
“producing relationships”. Grindr was developed by Joel Simkhai, who in a similar vein to other
digital software legacies originating in California, started little (with $5000 of his savings) and got
big (Hall, 2013). Grindr does not manage its users in the same way as Google, Facebook, or
more broad social media systems. It has no investors and is funded entirely by advertising on its
free version (Grindr) and subscription fees on its paid version (Grindr Xtra) (ibid.). Here it
operates as a closed power structure, which we know historically might tend towards
oppression, and like any libertarian capitalist product, applies itself to the greatest number of
users by packaging their modes of engagement into symbolic, simulated choices.

Affection Objects
I would like to propose here that the smartphone is a kind of surrogate object of
affection, being the physical device through which affect is sent and received. Smartphones are
on our bodies, we touch them all the time, we might even bring them to bed with us. Through
the prevalence of apps like Grindr, gay people have come to expect that the app and their
smartphone will bring them affection and sexual gratification at a steady pace. One is ever-
presently checking for a buzz in the pocket that indicates a new message has been received.
The way we must however read this affection is numbed by the interface and its reductive
tropes. Affection and intimacy cannot be perfectly translated, or modulated, into the
comparatively discrete packages of representation provided by the app.

In “Cinema 1: The Movement Image” Deleuze discusses “affection-image” as a kind of

image used in filmic shots. This refers to close-ups of the face that aim to reveal the interiority of
a connected body (its emotions), either projected onto, or read from within, the workings of a
face. “There is no close-up of the face, the face is in itself close-up, the close-up is by itself face
and both are affect, affection-image.” (Deleuze, 1986, p.98) My interest in the idea of an
affection image stems from my own frustration as a user in reading affection in images of other
men online within a system that purports to provide it. To Deleuze, although affect-images are
always “faces” (or “facified”) they do not have to actually be faces. A close-up on a clock-face is
for example an attempt at revealing the interiority of the clock, or of the clock’s reflective state,
or response to, the environment around it. This idea is important when thinking about online
dating apps, particularly here Grindr, because we are faced with a wide variety of images from
which to glean affection, many of which are not faces, or are still and unrevealing faces. To
Deleuze, a facial system implies the body; a face is “read” in such a way that it describes the
functions of the body it facialises. On gay apps, users are for the most part represented as
bodies or faces. Users can use other images (landscapes, for example) but such users will
mostly be ignored; they are not at all ‘readable’ and do not communicate affect. A face is a
body; we must imagine the body that supports it. What is the face that is imagined? One we can
go on a date with? What is the body that is imagined? One that we want to have sex with?

The face is the organ carrying plate of nerves which has sacrificed most of its global
mobility and which gathers or expresses in a free way all kinds of tiny local movements
which the rest of the body usually keeps hidden. Each time we discover these two poles
in something - reflecting suface and intensive micro-movements we can say that this
thing has been treated as a face - it has been facified, and in turn it stares and us and
looks at us […]” (Deleuze, 1986, p.98)

Yet on dating apps we cannot read these micro-movements and are instead presented
with “poker-faces”; still faces that hide their interiority. We cannot read any real emotions in the
body, we must interpret each face as a “type”. Deleuze continues:

There are two sorts of questions which we can put to the face, depending on the
circumstances: what are you thinking about? Or, what is bothering you, what is the
matter, what do you sense or feel?” (Deleuze, 1986, p.99)

If we are to ask any of these questions of any face online, what we must conjure in our
minds is a concept of the inner workings of the person and their possible affection towards us as
read through a single image, or series of images, and a discrete set of phrases and data on a
profile. The profile is the face of the person, and instead of reading muscular micro-movements
in a user’s facial features we read data and static imagery. Imagery is not here like Baroque
painting; it does not express or externalise maximal folds of emotion or meaning, it is a closeup,
generally cold, and designed to mask anything but the “objective” appearance of the person;
this is the “any-person-whatever” of the person, that is, the person designed to catch the most
number of affective responses.

The face that attracts the most number of other faces is generally not a revealing face,
but one that allows others to project their own desires onto it (a reflective face). This is not a
specific person but a person functioning as a type. What we find here is the Deleuzian
distinction between “quality” and “power” in the affect-image, the difference between reading a
face as having qualities “common to several different things” (the still, whole, face as a “type”),
and the expression of “power which passes from one quality to another” (the ability to read
movements in individual features in the face). We must read other human beings in terms of
their “quality” as we do not have enough expressive information. We must fit these self-
representations to what we already expect similar images to behave as. As such we find in
many, a person who has self-aggregated so as not to offend, but defend, against any
suggestion that they’re a non-sexual person; a person that otherwise cannot capitalise in the
facial market. What is ultimately consumed in this market varies (affection, intimacy, hookups),
but all begin with the image, and all opportunities must be initially represented by one. Even if a
user chooses to have no image, they will be represented by a blank automatically generated
silhouette of a face in most cases; the ultimate “poker face”.

The body as affect-image

According to Deleuze, faces represent bodies (their inner workings, the operation of their
organs) and faces are close-ups. But in a body-under-glass world when we are faced with a
body image as a profile image we must read close-up bodies as faces. A torso online, as an
avatar, is to be met as face. It is the first point of contact for an identity and we must guess the
identity of its owner. If it is a fit torso, then it describes a sexually abled body that can achieve
the purposes of a sexual exchange. When we read still bodies or torsos for affection, as faces,
we do not get all that much. Like faces, torsos present a flat plate with a few features upon
themselves; two nipples like eyes and perhaps a crease in the belly denotes mouth. Different
levels of muscularity, ribs or fat tell us limited information about the lifestyle or personality of the
subject. I am not claiming to read the torso as a literal face of course, but in some respects it is
an even more “reflective” face than an expressionless selfie - it is more stern and more poker-
faced - intending to reveal even less than a cool expression or a semi-sexual pout on an actual
face.

The penis as affect-image

The penis-as-closeup is a tradable affection-object in a body-under-glass world. Each,
like torsos, can stand in for identities. A penis-as-input is on display. On some apps (Jack’d,
Manhunt) these can be the profile image. On others (Hornet, Gaydar) they must be private
images that users reveal to each other if they want to display what they are working with.
Sometimes, the penis image will be the first image the user sends to you to initiate
communication if their profile is completely blank. The penis-as-close-up represents the
Deleuzian pole of “power” more often than not. Movement is more easily imagined here; the rise
and fall of arousal. Veins suggest power or the flow of blood - and there is the urethra (a
singular eye) - the growth of the erection or the folds of the testicles. It is “happy to see you”. A
flaccid penis is relaxed and confident perhaps, where a roaring erection is ready to go. A penis
reveals more than a torso or a bottom, but it is still an affection-image that avoids the
presentation of a totally revealing face, and as a type of image indicates a masculine readiness
to take sexual action over more complex affections.

The bottom as affect-image

The bottom as a face presents itself as a willing receptacle in any sexual exchange. Its
represented body is ready and rearing. Like the penis image it can be sent as a private photo
but often by submissive males who are intent on being penetrated. Two flat cheeks, and the
anus, a mouth of sorts. As a whole, solid type of form, the bottom is the ultimate reflective face.
Unlike the penis it is illustrative of quality rather than power. Desire can be projected onto it. As
submissive, more often than not, it reflects the desires of the dominant male in the sexual
exchange. It yields very little in terms of movement unless where the anus is opening or closing,
pushing out or winking, almost always to indicate a desire to be penetrated. The bottom, having
less individual qualities than the penis, acts to reveal little more than the quality of a willingness
to receive.

The finger fingering affect-images

The other body part that plays a huge role in our discussion of the body-under-glass is
the finger. The finger to me is the extension of the will of the user, for whom bodies and their
parts are displayed. The finger is external to the glass and the affect-images beneath it; it is
what numbingly browses and swipes through displayed bodies. It is what punches out the
opening lines of conversation, and presses the block, send and chat buttons. It pokes at glass
but feels very little in terms of sensation. The finger as a narcissistic control mechanism, a
scepter of command, is the physical manifestation of the user’s internal judgement; the point of
decisive action. It decides what external objects are to be included or excluded from the users’
world, that is, which objects “make the cut”. I have known users who have blocked thousands of
profiles before ever initiating contact, just so that this world is constructed accordingly and to the
benefit of the user through the personal screen (so that only those best matching the user’s
desires appear). The finger chooses what complements the narcissist, but as mentioned earlier,
is a numb unfeeling finger. The user, as a god over their iPhone world, is a closed-circuit.

Playing with Objectified Bodies

On the topic of the finger, narcissism and god-complexes, video gamers may remember
the famous title by Peter Molyneux’s Lionhead Studios, “Black and White”. This was an
archetypal “God Game” where players were represented by a floating virtual hand, with index
finger outstretched, on screen. This hand could do “good” or could do “evil” with relative ease; it
could pick up individual villagers and throw them, set them on fire, heal them, make them breed
or physically beat up other creatures. This hand would morph in appearance depending on its
alignment on a scale from “good” to “evil”. Gamers could get ultimate satisfaction from
becoming either and they could see their actions shaping the world through visual feedback of
the game; the hand would change in appearance (to look gnarled and “evil” for example) and
the landscape would alter (become barren, or abundant with flowers). When using dating apps,
however, our hands do not change to represent our influence over the environment (other
people) as we manipulate interactive content. Instead we browse through other human beings
using our fingers on a touch-screen, not casting fire and brimstone upon them, but nonetheless
employing some level of tactility and gesture that implies judgement; a block button, a chat
button, typing the words “hello”, all imply some action that confirms or denies another human
being access to our own personal individual milieu.

Video games are an important format for me to utilise when critiquing or parodying
online dating worlds. Video games, just as dating apps, rely on simulation. When we create a
character in a role playing video game, for example, we adjust a series of sliders representing
height and weight (or moral alignment), as well as tick check boxes for gender, archetype, or
facial hair. We do precisely the same thing when we set up our profiles to be used on dating
websites, but instead of selecting an archetype such as “the mage”, “the warrior” or “the rogue”,
apps like Grindr now allow us to select from gay “tribes” such as “bear”, “twink” or “clean-cut”.
The profile, composed of just as much information as anybody’s video gaming avatar, sets up a
curated participant in this multiplayer “game”. The term “Grindr” seems appropriate; in video
games the term “grinding” refers to mindlessly slaying enemy monsters for hours in order to
“level up”, and it seems as users of Grindr we tend to do the same; we addictively consume
images of bodies in order to “get up”. A great, much earlier parody of this kind of body-defined-
by-sliders scenario appears in John Tonkin’s 1990s work “Elastic Masculinities” which can be
accessed on Tonkin’s website (Tonkin, 1996). This is a really simple work where viewers can
adjust sliders to create awkwardly distorted male human bodies beyond the boundaries of any
acceptable standard that we might find in a videogame, or as acceptable standards on a dating
site, however here it is done through images rather than using 3D meshes as is common today.

“The Sims” video game series has come to be a tool in the construction of my work and
influence over how I present human bodies. Known as the “doll house simulator” when it
appeared on the shelves in the year 2000, “The Sims” allows players to construct houses and
control the lives of different family members. “The Sims” has been an important avenue of
research to Mary Flanagan who writes on the topic of Critical Play (2009), discussing how
artists, non-artists, and children have played with dolls and dollhouses as a way of
understanding, controlling and subverting the systems of domesticity and self-image they
represent. One can symbolise whole (real-world) systems, and the characters playing within
them as a way to control them. In video gaming this has been achieved through “The Sims” and
other games like “Sim City” which give players virtual worlds to manipulate but also
opportunities to arrange those worlds as they wish; one can deviate from the expected path to a
great degree. Strategies like modding, “re-skinning” (creating ones own visual textures to
change the game) or “un-playing” (playing the game “wrong” deliberately) are some strategies
gamers use to alter a game’s reality and the world it represents (Flanagan, 2009, p.41) Playing
with bodies and worlds in the form of virtual and physical representations allows for a kind of
“transformative play” where one can overcome a structure in order to imagine it differently
(Salen and Zimmerman, 2004, p.305).

Doll play as a strategy for both non-artists and artists has been a relevant investigation
for me. Personally, my mother has amassed a collection of over 600 Barbie and vintage Sindy
dolls in her Adelaide home. I often consider as a result, how we “play” with symbolic
representations of human beings in order to work-through personal issues and understand the
world. The below artwork of mine “Penney Family Christmas” (2014) explores using “The Sims”
as an artistic tool. Here Critical Play becomes part of my own practice beyond the boundaries of
the game world, helping me think about my relationship to my own family. I had built my own
family’s house in “The Sims”, as well as created bodies for them from the character creation
tools provided. Using the 3D photo building tool Agisoft Photoscan, I used 360 degree
screenshots taken of individual game scenes to build distorted 3D copies of them; here my Sims
household. I also took 360 degree photos with a digital camera of my family members’ heads to
create realistic 3D meshes of them which I placed on top of the distorted versions of their Sim
character bodies. This provides a solid example of how my practice employs games and game
making software to construct my own “critical” worlds.
Figure 1: “Penney Family Christmas” 2014, Tom Penney

Constructing Critical Worlds

As an artist of new media, I see myself as constructing my own critical worlds out of
digital content. This includes digital content that has been repurposed or translated from its
original use, such as with my 3D scans of “The Sims” environments. My worlds also represent
but parody real ones. It is however important for me to distance myself here from “Machinima”,
which my work is not, or artists claiming “post-internet” or “diamond generation” methods.
Machinima - or machine cinema - is art modding from game engines. These for the large part
involve using existing systems (such as video games, Facebook, Tumblr and YouTube) as a
major platforms for artistic work and, as a point of departure, treat these platforms as neutral
canvases (or at least, banal enough canvases) to the point that complacency within them is
acceptable. In my opinion “Post-Internet”, or “Machinima” are here lazy terms used to absolve
artists from facing the real challenge of stepping outside of such systems and creating their own
as critical doppelgangers. I am not creating artwork inside any video games or social networks.
At all points I am attempting to create reductive, critical systems, that take iconic tropes from
those under question and highlight those tropes, as a way to focus on them and raise questions
about their operation to viewers.

This is why as a major tool I choose to use Unity3D (in tandem with other 3D imaging
softwares like Agisoft Photoscan) as my “Critical Play” platform. Unity3D is generally used as a
game-making tool. It provides its own game engine, but can be used liberally for developing any
sort of interactive 3D content. Although not an entirely “neutral” canvas (it is still a constructed
interface providing certain tools), it provides a space in which I can arrange any of my own
digital content and dictate its interaction. There are no online algorithms, no social networks, no
users, no rhetorics of “community”, to interfere with anything I wish to communicate as an artist-
subject. I am not constrained by game, social media, or online dating worlds when using
Unity3D, which can handle pretty much any 2D, 3D and even video content, as well as allow
elements to be programmed as desired. When I work in Unity3D I feel I have my own freedom
as an artist to create very specific “doll houses” or “possible worlds”. I can arrange elements as I
so desire. To Deleuze, one of the functions of art is precisely to point to the suggestion of a
different possible world - in this case my constructed possible worlds are uncanny - they are
distillations of real world systems but they are different, broken, and absurd.

Works at the “Radicalism” Exhibition

For the “Radicalism” show at Melbourne’s Substation Gallery, curated by Drew Pettifer, I
presented four artworks; a large digital print, a video, and two works on iPad, all centred on the
theme of online dating applications, particularly Grindr, but also one work concerning the
pansexual Tinder app. “Radicalism” was a show presented during Melbourne’s Midsumma
queer festival that sought to explore “...radicalism, resistance and defiance around questions of
gender and sexuality in the contemporary moment.” (The Substation, 2014). My four works were
presented in a dark dungeon-like space suited to screen works but also reflecting the somewhat
seedy or “out of sight” nature of Grindr and its related subject-matter.

The video artwork I presented, “Tough Guy / Big Red X” (Figure 6) shows my own finger
blocking, one by one, all of the Grindr users in my area. Normally when one browses through
Grindr profiles, the process is about narrowing down the type of men displayed in order to select
apparent suitors. In this case I performed this process without any filter; I put no restrictions on
age, ethnicity or any other personal details. Whoever appeared was blocked immediately. The
blurb for this work, written by myself and Pettifer, was as follows:

[...] Tough Guy / Big Red X looks at how users perceive and treat representations of
other people in contemporary dating apps. The artist swipes unceremoniously through
dozens of Grindr profiles, rhythmically blocking each user as their profile loads. The
finger, insensitive towards these bodies-under-glass, becomes an extension of the
artist’s ambivalence towards the app’s ability to provide meaningful affection. Each
subject becomes a discarded body preceding an endless series of options as the artist
challenges the standardisation of queer identity encouraged by the app’s design
(Penney and Pettifer, 2014)

“Tough Guy / Big Red X” makes a normally private process of judgement public. It aims
to make viewers highly conscious of the number of users, faces or bodies they themselves
discard or swipe through daily on their own device. It turns a private screen into a public display,
exacerbated by stock videos of crowds playing in the background behind the phone. It itself
becomes an intensive or reflective face. It is intensive because the artwork displays a series of
repetitive movements, although these reveal nothing except a mechanical body – that of the
screen or Grindr itself. The participating finger is merely an extension of this process. As
reflective however, the work is demonstrative of an issue. This could be any phone-face or any
finger. It responds to its environment rather than reveal the interiority of its user, that is, the
phone itself or the artist who is off camera. We must ask ourselves if we are the same as this
any-phone-whatever or this any-finger-whatever when reading the artwork. The faces or affect-
images of each discarded user are equally unimportant. We do not read them individually when
they are subject to the phone-as-face; they are only what the phone sees (as reflections upon
its face) and are thus any-profiles-whatever. All stats and individual characteristics are rendered
meaningless when subject to a single, repeated action that seems not to care for any such
criteria. The video becomes expressive of a machine that exists only to impersonally and
perpetually discard images of Grindr users.

Figure 6: “Tough Guy / Big Red X”, 2013, Tom Penney

Gay Under the Glass

“Gay Under the Glass” (2013-14) (Figure 7) is an artwork made in Unity3D for iPad. The
viewer is presented with a body loosely hanging within a faux Grindr frame. It’s a male body
made out of virtual “cloth material”, so it has a floppy, flaccid quality to it. The body of the man
(here called “Joel” for no particular reason) appears squashed up against the screen and
glitches slightly, particularly where the face and penis are. There are two oddly crisp and
isolated virtual fingerprint marks on the screen deliberately made to approximate real
fingerprints. When the user touches the body, Joel’s face snaps to the finger and they can drag
his body around under the screen. Early versions of this work that were not on iPad used a
finger image in place of a mouse cursor, but with the iPad viewers can directly touch the
interactive body with their finger rather than use a mouse. At the same time they drag the body,
a smudging-glass sound is heard to make the user more conscious of their dragging the body
with their finger. It is very important that this work be on iPad and that users get to touch the
body with their finger as they drag it around because this more closely resembles the dating app
experience on a touch phone.

The notion of affection or affect-image as it applies to this work is problematised. The

work sends-up or makes farcical the problems I have identified earlier in this paper. Dragging
the loose, saggy body around via its glitched-up face is rather satisfying. The body is pressed
against the screen with some semblance of non-virtual physicality. The viewer gets a strong
sense of their own sadistic manipulation of the body as they use their finger to smear it around.
The intention is to invoke a self-awareness of the kind of “god complex” I spoke about as it
applied to the video game “Black and White” through the objectification of a virtual body beneath
a commanding finger. The glitching of the face, and this glitching as a point of contact with the
finger, creates a physical relationship to the distortion of facial imagery; the distortion of the
affect-image. This distortion also extends to the manipulation of the body and penis. The body is
the most expressive component here, it distorts and twists when it collides with itself, the finger,
and its profile-prison. The penis and face, both affective close-ups, are glitched and provide us
with no information. The unnatural smudging sound emanating from the finger’s interaction only
makes it more obvious that there is no real physicality at play either; these are strange
simulations of any visceral experience. The whole work becomes a slapstick irreverent
downplaying of these elements; of the body, its relationship to a personal glass screen, and to a
user who sees that body as an object, and intends to make this absurdity clear to any user of
Grindr through this uncannily-portrayed “version” of a simplified Grindr encounter.
 Figure 7: “Gay Under the Glass”, 2013, Tom Penney

TinderFlick
“TinderFlick” (2014) (Figure 8) was a new work developed specifically for the
“Radicalism” show. I had always wanted to make a work about Tinder because its method of
browsing through possible dates is unique. On Tinder, one is presented with profile image after
profile image, at which point the user makes a quick decision to “swipe left” or “swipe right”. One
“swipes left” to discard a human being; these people you are not attracted to. If however you
“swipe right” this indicates you might like to chat to the person, and if they also happen to “swipe
right” on you then you get a match and can chat to each other. This work relates to the video
work “Tough Guy / Big Red X”; viewers perform dismissive swipe or flick gestures on
“TinderFlick”’s virtual bodies. These gestures dismiss bodies and imply users’ judgement
although here they can do it themselves rather than watch my finger do so. In this scenario, I
have played with the idea of “Tinder” being a fire, both positive and negative. Here no matter
which direction you swipe the constant onslaught of bodies, they land in the fire. Perhaps it’s a
furnace these people land in, or perhaps these are the “sparks of a new relationship”, who can
say?

In this work, there are only four bodies that rotate through, although each time they are
presented with a randomly generated name. These are white, generic bodies, two male and two
female. I used open source meshes and turned them into floppy ragdolls, whose heads always
face the user as if silently begging the user to “pick me!” or offer them some affection. When the
user places their finger into the profile space to flick the body left or right, the person’s head
snaps to the finger, often extending their neck in an absurd fashion and leaving their body
flailing about behind them. The bizarre disconnect of the head from the body creates a strange
relationship between each person’s face and their connected body. When the head is “flicked”
either side, the body often snaps back as if on an elastic band (via the neck). After a user has
discarded a few bodies on either side, the “bodycount” starts to rise, and the cadavers become
uncontained by the space either side of the “profile” area. They loll about, toppling throughout
the whole scene. This artwork is clearly an expression of complete ambivalence towards the
“Tinder treatment”.
 Figure 8: “TinderFlick”, 2014, Tom Penney

A Handsome Man
“A Handsome Man” (2014) (Figure 9) was presented as a large digital print. The image
produced is a result of a series of “accidents” that occurred during the development of “Gay
Under the Glass”. This image presents viewers with a screenshot of the project scene used for
“Gay Under the Glass”, but unfinished and with some of the barriers around Joel’s body
removed so that he splays out onto the floor in front of him. Behind him is a Grindr screenshot of
someone initiating the conversation “What’s shakin’ handsome?” and next to Joel is a red
“block” button. As Joel is actually a virtual inflatable cloth object, a virtual level of pressure fills
his body like a balloon, and as I was dragging the sliders to create different levels of pressure,
his penis became more absurdly erect and “pressurised”. A second amusing accident occurred
here when I left the hair attached to Joel’s body, which due to its complexity, broke and
appeared as a smear on the backboard behind his head when I turned the gravity physics in
Unity3D on. As such, Joel appears a totally deflated manikin, an “any-person-whatever” sporting
a large priapism next to the eerily disjointed words “What’s shakin’ handsome?” to which Joel
offers no response, and a hovering block button, seething red like an omen of the dysfunctional
affective experience that is to follow if there were to be some sort of affective or dis-affective
exchange.
 Figure 9: “A Handsome Man”, 2014, Tom Penney

Concluding Comments
The concerns discussed in this paper, notably regarding the relationship between
bodies, screens, faces and fingers, have been explored through a number of works during my
practice particularly those shown in the “Radicalism” exhibition in Melbourne. I began this paper
with a discussion of an unusual tension; between the notion of an app providing meaningful
affection to users, and this affection as undermined by the strange narcissistic and numbed
affective circuitry that such apps engender. Throughout my work I have drawn conceptual
parallels between elements of gaming and dating apps in order to draw attention to the
simulations of the body present in app-dating environments. My work has seized the concept of
critical “world building” to create uncanny parodies and symbolic reductions of online dating
environments. These reductions have involved a focus on using the finger or swipe-gestures to
select, discard, or distort virtual human beings. The work draws viewers’ attention to their own
gestures and judgements by taking them out of context and rendering them absurd. This
enables viewers to translate the parody back to their own use of dating apps and reflect upon
how they objectify other users and themselves.

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