\”Being a person is not the essence of humanity, only – as the world\’s history suggests – one of its masks.\” — John Gray \”my main concern with someone stealing my identity is that they would be a better me\” — @BrandyLJensen \”A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.\” — André Gide We are currently living in a society that operates under the principle that one body equals one agent, one vantage point, one identity. But emerging technologies may create a future in which the notion of a single personal identity becomes outdated. That future includes: machine learning techniques that make emulating the style and behavior of other people fast and easy; widely available AR/VR headsets that get people to identify with however many faces and bodies they choose, instead of just those they were born with; cryptocurrencies enabling the use of pseudonymous economic identities to transact across the planet in a permissionless manner. This is a course where we will get to explore and anticipate the utopian and dystopian aspects of this weird future of identity, by: designing weekly interventions for obfuscating, simulating, multiplying, and merging ourselves online and offline, using tools like Puppeteer and Runway; looking at projects that seek to redefine, expand, or dissolve concepts of personal and social identity, from artists such as Lynn Hershman Leeson and Stelarc; and reading widely about the historical, philosophical, and psychological underpinnings of identity.

ITPG-GT.2041.1 () | Instructor: Anastasios Germanidis / Dan Oved | Wed 6:30pm to 9:25pm | Meeting Pattern: 6-First Half | Start Date