Overview

The Ballad of Technological Dependency links narratives of fact and fiction, threading together memory, friendship and community. Created by Australian artist Daniel Mudie Cunningham, the work combines answering-machine messages with photographs of thirteen friends, drawing on events and recollections from the previous year. The work emerged from Cunningham’s interest in American photographer Nan Goldin and Australian photographer William Yang, whose practices document the communities and subcultures to which they belong. Rather than attempting to tell the truth through photography, Cunningham became increasingly interested in blurring fact and fiction, using real people, messages and memories to invent parts of the story. In 2000, Cunningham made a sequel, Repeats.