Technology now allows us to achieve more and do more than ever before. It also allows us to remain connected like never before

But that connection to those who are not near us can also cause us to be disconnected to those who are right beside us. Eric Pickersgill has taken this and turned it into artwork that’s making people rethink their connection to technology

Eric Pickersgill says the joining of people to devices has been rapid and unalterable. 

The application of the personal device in daily life has made tasks take less time. Far away places and people feel closer than ever before. 

Despite the obvious benefits that these advances in technology have contributed to society, the social and physical implications are slowly revealing themselves. Eric uses art to bring that reality to light and has helped conversations begin about healthy boundaries when it comes to technology and relationships. In similar ways that photography transformed the lived experience into the photographable, performable, and reproducible experience, personal devices are shifting behaviors while simultaneously blending into the landscape by taking form as being one with the body. This phantom limb is used as a way of signaling busyness and unapproachability to strangers while existing as an addictive force that promotes the splitting of attention between those who are physically with you and those who are not.

REMOVED was released five years ago, but continues to go viral every couple of months. Eric says he will continue to add to REMOVED as time goes on.