In this trio of work, I continue to investigate the delicate veil between physical and virtual realities and the increasing influence of artificial intelligence [particularly machine learning algorithms] on the human experience in ways that tend to remain invisible due to complacency, nescience, and lack of transparency.
In this work, I play with the idea of individuality, the illusion of choice, and the paradox of self-reflected identity. What if our feeds resemble those of an ‘Other’? What if our feeds do not satisfy? Do we question our likes, our interests, our beliefs, our dreams? Or do we dare question the algorithm, the heuristic, and the motivation for consumerist architecture?
=== SPOILER === materials & process === SPOILER ===
Each of these mixed media pieces feature a PyPortal with wifi module intended for the IoT, and used here to access various social media feeds curated by algorithms for crafted ‘personalities’. I spent several weeks curating the personalities on isolated devices so that each of my three sculptures would have unique feeds on ‘their’ social media. I then have the PyPortals grab the video streams, shorts, or images to play on the embedded mini-screens.
Each sculpture was designed to reflect a personality in an alternate future formed by their constant attachment to a social media feed since childhood. Isolated, recursive, incestuous, and yet, I reference an indomitable human beauty in each. My young sisters, raised in synthetic wombs, desperate for connection, have crafted their own worlds, weaved their own symbolic languages, and protest through their own self-presentation.
I print my digital portraits, cnc my designs in wood to create layers of movable pieces which lift up and out to reveal more of the workings hidden below, paint the final assemblage, and install the electronics behind the wall base.
