RP001 - DIGITAL FLUX
24_P004 - WAVEBAND INTRUSION (TBA)
23_P004 - DO YOU EVEN SPEAK GAUSSIAN?
22_P006 - OHNMACHT
21_P005 - ISTANBUL DELIRIUM
20_P002 - ADBUSTING
22_P006
OHNMACHT
Powerlessness in the Age of Entanglement - 'Ohnmacht', where the illusion of digital freedom collides with the harsh reality of data profiling. Trapped between autonomy and control, our digital lives reveal a stark reality of predestined choices and unseen data manipulation.
INTRODUCTION:
Imagine you wake up in your room one day, and you get up to get yourself a glass of water.
You walk towards the tap, but instead of the flowing water, you hear a notification chiming in:
„Please fill this short survey in order to activate your water supply“,
annoyed you fill out which yoghurt is your favourite and get yourself a snack.
Taking a shower means watching two 30 second ads, enabling warm water for 5 minutes, dont want to ? Thats fine. Cold showers are healthy for your immune system anyway.
Please enter your username and your password for your bike to unlock, we want to be sure it is you.
With „Ohnmacht“ i want to portray how easy we go about handing over choices that
drastically impact our lives merely because we aren’t aware of the seriousness of the
digital realm. There are already hundreds of profiles about you. You have nothing to
hide? No problem. There are programs analyzing your buying patterns, noting things
you like, dislike, fetishize and fantasize about. How would you feel if your neighbour
knows these things about you?
STORY:
Being controlled and steered into a path that someone else forces you to take, unable to say yes or no is an horrific thought but its a reality for a long time in the age of entanglement. You were never in the position to be asked about your thoughts about anything, because you dont make money to the company as an individual.
Your worth is defined by your demand, by how much you are able to be exploited, how much you can be harvested of your personal information. It’s written down in the six thousand page long Terms- of-Service but you don’t have time for that, because there are around a thousand services that demand your attention.
E-Mails have to be sent, bills have to be paid and Whatsapp-Chats have to be responded to.
We are into deep, that we could raise our voice. It will take years until someone notices, that our data was mistreated, our memories and life-events collected and processed in order for us to acquire more posessions and find ways to make our life more efficient, so we can generate more, faster.
You have the freedom of choice. Feel free to walk away from the digital world, let’s see how long you can last. Unable to strive forward or backwards, you’re trapped in the decision of which data-mining company will exploit you less. Comply or something will make sure that you won’t be able to anymore.
I portray powerlessness in the modern day in an more obvious way by creating the illusion of freedom of choice. Choosing an option will have consequences in the progress of the experience. You will have to run this program in order to use the internet for anything, but the program makes it really hard to be your true self. You are forced to choose options that you do not identify with because of the lack of functionability of the program. You put yourself in boxes because you need to, if you want it to be over. The same way you have to accept cookies to enter a website.
SCOPE / APPROACH :
- without external input -
how you relate to a certain technological
boundary/pass without the input of anyone else, barely subjective
- with external input -
how you feel about a certain piece of technology depending on how others have their connection
with it
INSTALLATION:
You enter the space, there is ominous music in the background running and in front of you there is a fast diashow of faces of people merging into eachother. These people dont exist. There are 10 people from different age groups, genders and cultural backgrounds experiencing powerlessness in the Age of Entanglement which share their stories. To Interact you have to raise your arms, like if you’d get robbed or someone is holding you at gunpoint.
Here are two of their stories: