Book for/by Kelli Miller

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CLIENT

Kel­li Miller is a Brook­lyn, NY-based artist and design­er work­ing in motion, dig­i­tal media, and print design. She is a grad­u­ate from Cran­brook Acad­e­my of Art’s 2D design pro­gram and her art­work has been shown inter­na­tion­al­ly. She teach­es at Pratt and her clients have includ­ed AMC Net­works, Nick­elodeon, Coke, and MTV.

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BRIEF

This pub­li­ca­tion was cre­at­ed as part of my per­son­al prac­tice in which I con­front our quo­tid­i­an rela­tion­ship to progress, dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy, and com­mer­cial cul­ture. The goal was to cre­ate a small-run pub­li­ca­tion to dis­trib­ute and sell at gal­leries, artist book­stores, and muse­ums and extend my series of self-pub­lished books.

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APPROACH

Total Bum­mer exam­ines the didac­tic emo­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of human to machine inter­ac­tions in stock pho­tog­ra­phy. Images of arti­fi­cial and ambigu­ous frus­tra­tions involv­ing peo­ple and their lap­tops are reduced to 8‑bit bina­ry illus­tra­tions and paired with search terms, cre­at­ing an almost poet­ic jux­ta­po­si­tion of mean­ing­less­ness, amuse­ment, and misrepresentation.