Critical Reflection: Girl Feeds Taylor Swift a Carrot is a digital collage displayed on an always-on iPhone, mounted to a steel rod embedded in a concrete block. It is a digital collage with a girl offering Taylor Swift a carrot. Taylor is behind a wire fence which could represent a zoo like enclosure. On the fence there is a sign, from TikTok saying “Feed the Animals” with a subtext of “Be cougar and bear aware”. The sign is used in National Parks in the USA but has been reversed here with cougar and bear now having digital connotations.  It is a still image – a moment in time – rather than a loop displayed in the iphone. The iphone is plugged in, and set to always on display.

The act of offering a carrot, a traditional symbol of encouragement, becomes symbolic in the context of TikTok and digital culture. Here, the carrot represents likes, clicks, shares — the feedback loops that keep the machinery of celebrity culture alive. The child becomes both participant and product, trained from a young age to “feed” celebrity through interaction.

Taylor Swift is caged behind a wire fence, reminiscent of zoo enclosures — adored but inaccessible, commodified yet isolated. This highlights the paradox of digital intimacy: always visible, never reachable.

The materials — raw concrete and steel  — foundational elements of the built environment we live in are representative of the structures that underpin society. These are now fused with power (denoted by the charging cable), and always on technology via the smartphone, frozen on a still image of celebrity and social media, suggesting that these are now just as embedded in the infrastructure of society as steel and concrete.

The image of Taylor Swift is created by UltimateWarrior13 uploaded to Wikipoedia and available under the creative commons license Deed – Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International – Creative Commons