WHAT IS YOUR THESIS QUESTION?

Is narcissism inherent in digital interaction, or is there such a class of interaction that excludes referencing the self?

Working in museums I have been involved in or observed a number of digital initiatives. Through this work it’s been made clear that people are always enthused about digital offerings, but it’s often unclear whether it enhances the museum experience.

Narcissism has been described as “bracketing-out the world”, and I often think of it as a cul-de-sac, an experience that turns the user back upon themselves rather than expanding into something greater.

In the myth of Narcissus, he does not realize he is staring at his own reflection. Are we tricking people into narcissistic experiences under the guise of culture?

 

WHAT DO YOU PLAN TO MAKE?

I’d like to make something that is interacted with indirectly, or unknowingly. This might leverage unseen agents of internet use. How can we make visible essential underpinnings of internet that are rarely seen by casual users? Packets, web crawlers, WiFi signals, EXIF data, bots that talk to other bots. People interact with or are affected by these things constantly but rarely knowingly.

 

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT TO YOU?

I believe that through reassessing ambient technology of our daily lives we can grow to appreciate its impact and change our behaviors and modes of interaction. Better understanding how we are affected by invisible, structural impact of seemingly innocuous technology can help us to imagine possible futures where we are more in control of these environments.

The UI we interact with is only the surface of the massive infrastructure that supports our digital interactions. By deemphasizing UI can we draw the user’s attention away from the self?

WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS WITH THIS PROJECT?

I’d like to use this opportunity to try to define what best practices and standards might look like for non-narcissistic interaction. Ideally someone could come away thinking differently about digital products/tools and become more conscientious of their daily interactions.

 

INFLUENCES OR INSPIRATION?

  • Trevor Paglen is an artist whose work has exposed unseen aspects of technology and surveillance. Specifically his work “Autonomy Cube” has similarities to the aspirations of my thesis project.
  • Robert Sapolsky’s lecture on molecular genetics discusses how ambient collisions in a cell determine when and how genes are reproduced / copied.
  • Self-modifying code, can we establish digital comparisons to the biological collisions that spur gene replication? Are there an ambient “collisions” that occur in cyberspace? Can we write code that self-modifies based on the context / agent of these collisions?
  • “Starry Night” an example of art that uses emails as its primary material.
  • “Web Stalker” an experimental browser that made visible connections to files.
  • “Data Diaries” an artwork that made visual interpretations of data stored in the user’s RAM.
  • Fing App, a “network toolkit” app that seeks to expose information about your devices and network traffic.
  • Architecture of Radio is an app that visualizes the radio and wifi signals all around us.

HOW DO YOU ENVISION REALIZING THIS PROJECT?

I can see this project existing as a server exposed to the internet that users can interact indirectly with through web crawlers or emails.

To make this project a reality I need to talk with people who have a deep knowledge of servers and networks. There are three components to this:

  1. setting up a server to receive / detect ambient traffic like packets, web crawlers, emails
  2. writing server side script that interacts with the ambient traffic
  3. creating some kind of user feedback to demonstrate the nature of the interaction

Right now I feel like the idea makes sense in my head but is very difficult to explain in words. I should do more research or writing to try to make this more concise.

Techniques and tools would be programming self-modifying code, server provisioning and UI design.

TAGS

user interface, narcissism, infrastructure, genetics,  IoT