Tom Penney

RMIT University | RMIT · School of Media and Communication

Why is it that gay men desire masculinity in its normative, symbolic and abstracted form? How do dating apps function to reproduce, and reinforce these codes over time through their use? In this paper I consider how this is achieved through users’ rapid parsing of what I term “affection-images”. Building off of Gilles Deleuze’s work on faciality in...

This paper provides an overview of the evolution of the Post-Digital Aesthetic paradigm in the context of Australian art practice; conceived in Australia, the term has been used by artists and thinkers for more two decades. However, discourses around the expression in abundance in the northern hemisphere are rarely considered in our great southern...

Co-curated by Nancy Mauro-Flude & Tom Penney, VVitchVVavve was a Post-Digital Exhibition and Symposium hosted by RMIT University Digital Media at Siteworks, Brunswick, on 8 December 2018. Artists: Kate Geck, Patrick Hase, Mohamed Chamas, Kim D'Amazing, Tom Penney, J. Rosenbaum, Tim Dwyer, Ben Byrne and Denby Smith Guests: Theo Trian (LA), Florian...

Today identities are considered fragmented and multiple; they are ever-changing performances. However, recent discourse surrounding identity suggests the way we engage in online media can actually essentialise identities through social sorting, creating positive feedback loops and by commodifying niche communities. We illustrate our thinking by loo...

“Some people have asked me… Do you want to exhibit your stuff? And I say… I already am bro” (@scobierobie, 2014) I last wrote about @scobierobie’s work for Cactus Journal in 2014 where I focused on how his work evaded the gallery space and sat in the context of Instagram as a distribution platform for outsider artists. This time his work is where t...

Digital cultures engage users’ social, creative and emotional labour – a process that can be described as affective. For some theorists and artists, this dynamic is inherently exploitative. However, within this exploitation is the potential, particularly in social media and games, to provide fuel for playful critique. The concept of ‘play’ is frequ...

The exchange of digital images depicting partial bodies is an iconic feature of online dating and contemporary sexuality. I build on previous writing and concepts explored by Deleuze and Guattari in regards to how such images function as "affection-images" (Deleuze, 1986). I then articulate how employing an affective structure of "faciality" (Deleu...

The exchange of digital images depicting partial bodies is an iconic part of the Grindr experience. In this article I discuss how such images function as "affection-images." How do static images of the face and parts of the body communicate affection between gay men? In approaching this question I uncover how gay men have produced their own norms a...

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 fetishised and consumed by a narcissistic homosexual market...