Machine Chic: How Hardware is Shaping Visual Culture
Words: Diana Weisman
Make it stand out
When Hunter Schafer's Vogue spread was released last month, one image in particular sparked a heated discussion on Twitter. Schafer is reclining on a plush carpet, head perfectly propped on a square pillow, wearing delicate ballet-slipper socks by Marni. She’s posed like a Renaissance angel, but instead of a gilded flute, she’s holding a Nintendo Switch. Commenters overlooked the immense power of product placement, as discourse mostly consisted of gamers questioning if she was accurately depicting someone playing it.
Yet the in shot Nintendo Switch perfectly encapsulates Schafer’s position in pop culture: a youthful, playful, modern hero of today’s society. With her far-away look, she could be either contemplating all she’s faced in her role as an activist or what’s currently transpiring in the palm of her hands. The image as a whole, thanks to the addition of the handheld console, is a celebration of varied forms of entertainment, self-expression, and luxury. Who do we traditionally see holding these devices? Schafer breaks through the system. It also may be a subtle Easter egg to fans who want her to play in the live-action Legend of Zelda. Either way, it’s part of a broader phenomenon, where machines hold more than just system memory but also messages, themes, and new layers of meaning when used in visual culture.
By choice, I didn’t have a smartphone until my early twenties when I finally succumbed to peer pressure and the desire to be included in group chats. It’s ironic that now, gen z are opting for dumb phones and that an Instagram account like @wireditgirls exists. The account has over 14k followers and declares that airpods are out and wired headphones are in, with 200+ editorial and celebrity images to support this. In all of the posts, the wires cut across the wearer’s body in a haphazard way, as if a toddler took a pen to the picture. It’s this interruption of the overall image that sums up the visual appeal — the unpredictability is relatable. In an interview with Bustle, the account creator explains: “The wire exudes an effortless kind of energy … being unbothered is the true luxury.” It’s nostalgic, harkening back to simpler times. While it seems easy to dismiss all placements of hardware from the past as simply cheap tricks to feed the nostalgia machine (see Sabrina Carpenter with a discman for SKIMS) there are many more examples that showcase the full potential of hardware in visual culture.
Take the latest cover of GQ, where Anya Taylor-Joy is photographed holding a Motorola flip phone to her ear. The full editorial promotes her new movie Furiosa, but also details how Taylor-Joy’s repertoire solidifies her as a champion of female rage. To accompany the subject matter, having the actress delicately hold a Razr on the cover makes for a cheeky double entendre. With its sexy, sleek surface and thin design, one could almost imagine her using it to slash straight through the page. Taylor-Joy also wears a version of the increasingly popular Bayonetta glasses, which few know are named after the Japanese video game character, Bayonetta — another technology tie-in. Bayonetta navigates through a dark world filled with angels, demons, and other supernatural entities wielding various weapons, as Taylor-Joy also does in her filmography and on this cover with her Motorola.
“High Snobiety spread For Crying Out Loud! seeks to “aestheticise what it means to watch ourselves cry”, featuring striking portraits of models with red eyes and tear-stained cheeks.”
High Snobiety spread For Crying Out Loud! seeks to “aestheticise what it means to watch ourselves cry”, featuring striking portraits of models with red eyes and tear-stained cheeks. This level of self-reflection is a pointedly modern act, but here models are accompanied by various images of camcorders, not iPhones. The camcorder’s position in the image, somehow both subtle and prominent at the same time, could have one almost mistaking it for a SONY advertisement, but in this context the devices take on a whole new meaning. These one-way camcorders lack the comfortableness and friendliness of the smartphones we’re so used to seeing. One in particular has a lens so large it looks like a giant open mouth, ready to swallow the crying model whole. The hard lines and cold metal surfaces are the perfect accompaniment to a story about vulnerability and lack of connection.
If you ask those in tech, wearables are the future, perhaps further solidifying that devices that exist outside ourselves are destined to become props, but this doesn’t mean hardware will cease to impact our identity. For Coperni’s Spring Summer 2024 show, models went down the runway wearing large square pins, in white or black, from tech brand Humane. The company hopes to shift people away from screens to living in the moment with their AI phone pin. Recently in a crowded bar for after-work drinks, I was able to get a preview of its function from a tech editor. The pin has a HUD, or heads-up display, meaning it projects the interface in front of you instead of on the device itself. When he shot the light out onto his hand and scanned through the UX, I was stunned. Did it work well? Would I replace my phone with it one day? I didn’t care. All I could think of were the striking visuals that could come of it and what this would mean for the future of cultural storytelling. The pin’s lack of a screen reminded me of the still-plugged-in yet effortlessly disconnected essence of the Wired It-Girls. Humane’s AI invention pairs innovative casing with lo-fi neon light projection, having its hand in both the past and future.
With AI seeming like the buzzword of the moment, it’s interesting to consider that it is hardware, not software, that represents the strongest emotions in visual culture. As technology evolves, so too will our relationship with hardware, like a precious gem that’s nothing without its ring setting.
Hardware holds the ability to be more than just a nostalgic throwback or a futuristic novelty. What was once purely for function is now a rich storytelling device and aesthetic compass, used by photographers, directors, and “it girls” to share compelling, multi-dimensional narratives. A quote from Halt and Catch Fire, an AMC drama that chronicles the rise of the personal computer industry in the 80s and 90s aptly sums it up: “Software may come and go, but hardware is forever.”
