C E L L
Cell, my recent collaboration with James Alliban, has been out for a few weeks now, and it’s been interesting reading the reactions to it. It was designed with a degree of deliberate ambiguity in order to allow visitors to bring their own thoughts to the piece, but I thought that some people may be interested to hear my take on it. I’m very open to other interpretations, and welcome criticism and discussion; in a way that is the most important part of the process for me.
If you missed it at Alpha-Ville festival, you can check out the videos here and on installcell.com.
When I was researching for Domestic Robocop, I made a print-out of all the information I had put up on the internet about myself. That included my website, all my social media profiles, and all my tweets and photographs etc. In the end, the project went in a different direction, but it started me thinking about the ideas of identity broadcasting, and my ‘digital aura’; namely the information that we link to ourselves online. I had a thought that my generation, having spent some formative years with social media, must be the first to be so self-conscious and well versed in the art of identity construction.
Before social media, our tools for telling people about ourselves were quite limited; we could dress a certain way, drive a particular car, or try to propagate a reputation. As an architecture student, I was particularly interested in the living room as a site of identity construction, a room into which we invite guests and that speaks on our behalf.
These methods are all quite consciously idealised manifestations of our characters, public versions of ourselves that we show to the world. There was a distinct boundary between the private and public us, and we did not attempt to quantify identity; while our public faces were tightly defined, our private ‘real’ selves were abstract, confused, contradictory and transient.
Many new social tools have emerged in the last decade that break this public/private divide, and are changing the way we in which we construct identity. Twitter in particular is so effective because it allows us glimpses into private moments of the people we are following. Instead of just the public facade of a person, you get something much more intimate and authentic. Seeing what our favourite celebrity is eating for lunch makes us feel more connected to that person; we become an insider, a member of their private circle.
But as formerly private activity seeps into the public domain, something else is also happening. The public facade is starting to coat our private lives, turning our intimate moments into media fragments, to be documented and consumed. We offer up nuggets of our private lives to add to our digital auras, and by doing so turn our private selves into sites for tuning and curation. Instead of focusing on the facade, our construction of identity becomes absolute, enveloping our entire character.
It is a new era of self expression, where there is increasingly less room for the private individual. The authenticity promised in exposing our private selves has been undermined by a new, deeper layer of facade, as our public mask grows to engulf an ever greater part our lives. We start to become defined by the content we post online; I broadcast, therefore I am.
As mediated online communications form an ever-greater percentage of our interactions, the limitations of the tools we use increasingly encroach on our lives. They are starting to shape not only how others see us, but also how we see ourselves.
Cell hints at a future where our digital aura will be inextricably linked to us, the public/private divide demolished, and our sense of self mutated into a curated simulacra. In this world, we will live entirely in public, our digital aura on display for all to see. We can no longer call our public life a facade, as representation itself has become content. We have been reduced to media conduits; simplified and eventually de-humanised. This may sound paranoid or overly pessimistic, but it is simply an exaggerated scenario based on current trends. I want cell to act as a provocation, to allow us to talk about this new world and explore its possibilities. Rather than making specific statements, I hope that the installation inspires questions:
Are we still able to separate our private selves from our public selves? Is this important? To what extent is our behaviour defined by the public perception of us? If we believe our own hype, are we reducing ourselves? By denying the undefinable, what do we lose?Can identity ever be fully quantified? What implications does that have?
In spite of these issues, exposing our digital auras is undoubtedly an exciting proposition. There are many technologies in development that will allow us to do exactly that; augmented reality for one, could superimpose online profiles on top of an individual via a digital overlay, or this information could simply be pushed to your smartphone.
This could usher in a new world of creative expression, with our own identities as the canvas. It could lead to a new age of open co-operation and collaboration, where coincidence and chance are exposed and presented to us. If I can read your broadcasted aura, we can immediately understand our common ground, and understand what we can offer each other. We can quickly have an insight into the relationship, even before we even open our mouths. People can become more useful to one another, and we gain a higher degree of control over our interactions.
Free information has the capacity to transform the way we relate to each other in ways that are not as frightening as you might expect. Instead of our cities being cold, anonymous places, they will suddenly be filled with people we can relate to, and can relate to us. My enthusiasm for these technologies is exactly why I think its so important to be discussing their impact with a healthy dose of cynicism. If we can anticipate, understand and resolve the issues, then I think that it’s a future worth aiming for.
James also posted about cell, you can read his post here. If you would like to install cell at your event, please contact info@installcell.com
