2024

The digital environment is contentious. People are aware of manipulation and surveillance either by governments to restrict access to information or by markets that sell us services and products. This has become obvious affecting the projects that I work on, for example, in China, where many people move from one VPN to another to get past government censorship, to the US, where social media is adopted by branding applied in everything from education to products, services, politics, and to other kinds of complex interactions between cultures and people through subtle data guidance and surveillance.

This installation is a reflection of that. There is a distrust in where information comes from and how it is used. Secondly, global instability has made people question many of the institutions that they previously believed in. Projected short, looped animations introduce issues of manipulation and surveillance through speaking for someone else, breath-thought-reflex, fragmentation, and other subjects. The AR is an additive component to the animations.

In the space, the AR component tentatively includes a turning globe, oversized books, a binocular, and redacted documents interspersed with false social media posts reported as facts by news media. The sequential documents lead the viewer out of the project room through the two doors and into the main gallery, where additional AR components are included, based on a larger library/archive to be developed during the exhibition. A monitor in the space will show the AR and projections together, and adjacent to this will be two to three iPads for viewers to use. A text introducing the ideas and background of the installation also includes a QR code for people to access the AR on their phones. Secondly, the feed shown on the monitors can be shown via the Internet.