Practically all technological progress comes with a price, and nowhere is that this more obvious, in 2023, than online. Face filters and digital avatars free us from the shackles of our worldly bodies; at the identical time, they cause widespread body dysmorphia and the eerie sense that we’re all turning into digital clones. Social media guarantees recent types of democracy and global consciousness; at the identical time, it polarises our discourse and obliterates our attention spans. Now anyone can turn out to be a star; now anyone can turn out to be a star.

Spanish-Croatian artist Filip Ćustić is conscious about these dichotomies embedded in our phone cameras, photo editing software, and social media feeds. His interdisciplinary artworks – which span sculpture, photography, video, and performance – are plagued by web iconography, prodding on the relationships between the body, mind, and technology, and the way all three come together to shape our personal identity.

“For quite a while now, my work has been very much inspired by the immediate present and the short-term future,” Ćustić tells Dazed, as his first solo show in Tokyo, human product, opens at PARCO Museum. “While researching, I realised that the one differentiating factor between our era and that of 100 years ago is technology, the web.” His work, then, is an effort to trace this variation, and the way it informs “who we’re, the structures we create to define ourselves”.

You would possibly not be surprised to listen to that the resulting artworks have a dystopian edge. Humans are become plastic dolls with a wide range of warped faces to wear – a part of a broader comment on how capitalist culture commodifies the human body – while others hunch inside a nest of wires, a bank of computer screens vying for his or her attention.

For Ćustić, it is a trend that is just more likely to proceed. “I feel we’ll suddenly look super bionic in the longer term, stuffed with technology, and we’ll say, ‘When did all this occur?’” he suggests. “But I feel it’ll be a really organic process, step-by-step and little by little. I observe this evolution, seeing that I’m a part of it, and I portray it artistically because as an artist I seek to document and portray my present or my near future.”

It’s not all bad, either – once more, technology is a double-edged sword. As they tilt toward transhumanism, Ćustić’s characters also develop recent, complex systems to relate to at least one one other and convey intending to their lives. On a private level, they use recent technology to reinvent themselves, something Ćustić compares to performing an operating system update. “Technology is inspired by the human being,” he explains, noting that its development is inextricably tied to the concept of human evolution. “Through technology, I feel we will evolve faster, or we will determine what type of evolution we would like to do.”

The intertwining of technology with human identity isn’t just depicted in human product, but physically manifested via wearable artworks that modify wearers’ facial expression with digital projections, and engravings that literally envision “bodies as canvases for a dialogue with the viewer”. Visitors can even alter their worldview via AR filters designed by Ćustić, comparable to the Fibonacci filter, which goals to recreate a moment of realisation within the artist’s life. “I discovered that the golden ratio is every little thing, it is gorgeous by itself and matches everyone,” he says. “Without sounding frivolous, I understood that beauty has very diverse expressions.” With that in mind, the filter is sort of a “technological totem” that goals to open our eyes to the wonder that surrounds us.

“I take advantage of my creativity to learn probably the most positive strategy to use these kinds of latest applications,” says Ćustić, noting the harm they may cause if used incorrectly. By his own admission, he’s still determining learn how to break freed from existing cultural frameworks and wonder canons himself, and every of his artworks may be seen as a type of “playful” and “open-minded” experiment, exploring how technology may be used to shape human evolution for higher, and never for worse.

“In my exhibitions and performances I would love the visitors to experience something recent, something never experienced before, and to open an inner dialogue,” he concludes. “I just mainly want people to experience recent paradigms, recent situations, so we will think out[side] of ‘human programming’.”

Filip Ćustić’s human product is on view at PARCO Museum, Tokyo, until April 24.