User:Mihail Bakalov/Trimester 4/GraduateResearchSeminar/ProjectProposal

2ndHandInformation3rdHandImagination

Intro and research direction

The past 8 months I took a look into on-line social networks, how users create content on them, which componets of these platforms are mostly used and tried to experimenting in this field. In my last research I was looking at selfies inhabiting online social networks and presenting a reflection of the identity of the user. How the user creates an on-line personality, transformed from the design of the social platform and established modes of behaviour. Now I want to take a look at the influence of other people upon the self and how they contribute into our on-line profile(as building identity). How people in your social circle in online environment are able to add content and link materials to your profile, with which expanding it, altering and restructuring it. Focusing on the aspect of the internet personalities as comprised of external elements. I want to explore how the information from my social circles, builds a part of my identity, but also creates a reference for 3rd partys. Interpretating the proverb “Who you surround yourself with, the same you become” in online social platforms and the refraction of the identity of the person from anothers eyes, into a third persons view. In Lacanian terms how the signifier represents the signifier for another signifier in the on-line social space.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

A visual interactive installation presenting content of a users profile on a social network such as facebook. The content of the profile will be molded into a visualization of an abstract three dimensional shape. The size and shape will be based on what amount of content has being uploaded to the profile, how many fields of interest had being marked and how many friends he has. The interactive part will be transforming this avatar, like modeling a sculpture. Physically remodeling the shape of it with your hands. The back end part of the installation will be a platform using data from another platform, such as facebook, to provide a more clear view of the design and function of social networks. It will take all the data that a user has on his profile and copy it to the new platform. It will present only a specific type of the content part of your profile, focusing on 3rd party related content from your profile. The platform would grow around the image of the digital avatar of the user, which would represent only the external element constructing his profile, not directly uploaded by him. The interactive part of the installation, the remodeling, is done through sending content from a friend of the user, who's profile is being displayed. In this project the visual presentation of the data is used as a controller, a visual output which is used as a joystick to enable the participant to remodel the profile. The main idea of this platform is to bring awareness about the influence of the friends circle of a user.

Research questions

While dealing with identity, I would like to look at how does the process of creating and managing an identity takes place on-line. How others in social circles of one person influence his identity. Looking at Lacan's researches about reflection of identity in another persons eyes and making experiments around how is that constituted on-line. Going through Jean Paul Satre's writing about how we are conscious of one's self through the affects that others have on the us.

Related previous projects

Within my last research I was looking at selfies as part of people's on-line profile as a portrait of the user on social networks. More particularly how they take an active part in peoples on-line selves, what influence is applied to them and how do they present us. Looking at these self-portraits as a reflection of the self, where the user is motivated to create them as it helps keeping the coherence and stability of the social I. The users identity formed and altered by on-line social networks creating an extension of the self. This extension is separated from the real self, presenting an amplification of the real individual and separating from him, forming it's own new look, situated on-line presenting it self and available to anyone who wants to see it. As a part of my selfie research I started working on an experiment called “Get rid of your self”

• Get rid of your self

Exploring the alteration of the profile by self-performative actions taken from the user on his profile. The script tries to find a replacement of you which is similar to you taking a look at coincidence of posted links, similarities between number of friends, content uploaded and amount of usual daily activity. As a final outcome this project presents you with a list of people, possible surrogates which have the most similarities to your profile.

• Youloop (V2_ exhibition)

In the project from the third trimester I took an exploration in social networks and user generated content. Building a local social network consisting of a video platform for users to share videos recorded in the exhibition space and a dual screen projection of the collected footage. Involving a commercial element for exploring the motivation of participants. In this experiment participants recorded videos with their smart phones and upload to the local video platform where they were presented with two options in which they lose their copyrights over the footage. The first is to donate it for free to an open public station providing download to anyone for free. The second is a platform where people receive monetary reward for their images.

http://headroom.pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/~mbakalov/rotator_bckup.php

Every link you click

• Every link you click

In this project Every link you click – browsing through the internet, collecting visual elements form every link clicked. Creates a visual profiled filled with images from his browsing history. Exploring the person from the actions he took on the web.

Relation to a larger context

While dealing with identity, I would like to look at how does the process of creating and managing an identity takes place on-line. Looking at Lacan's researches about reflection of identity in another persons eyes and making experiments around how is that constituted on-line. Going through Jean Paul Satre's writing about how we are conscious of one's self through the affects that others have on the us. Exploring what kind of an extension of our selfs is the 3rd party contributed network identity?

Related artists

• Ed Atkins – No one is more "work" then me - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XXzW6XcXyQ

Ed Atkins makes work in the process of life’s mediation through contemporary digital technologies: where and how bodies and beings are represented, to themselves and to others, and in what way our experiences are more or less verifiable, fed back to an embodied and immanent self. Using CGI, HD video, and audio he explores these possibilities by explicitly generating life-like imagery and effects to underscore the mortal and irrecoverable aspects of experience, resisting the material deferral innate to digital technique.

• R. Lyon – The Limits of Perception and the Rectangular Frame

http://irlyon.com/

A re-imagining of the self-portrait in the age of algorithmically conditioned social media. Using a loophole on the dating site OkCupid, Lyon asks the site to show him other heterosexual males that are the most like him— his digital doppelgangers according to the site’s data analysis. Running this protocol locally in Utrecht, Lyon has invited several high-percentage matches to the opening of the exhibition to serve as a kind of constellated, proprietary self-portrait.

Practical steps

Throughout small prototypes and practical assignments I will:

• Going through facebook profile data, looking for third party content and scraping the needed information.

• Creating a 3D mesh avatar with it.

• Prototyping an interaction with the created 3D shape.

Literature

Jean Paul Sartre - "No Exit"

Tiziana Terranova - Attention, economy and the brain

Eric Schmidt - The New Digital Age

Sheril Tucker - Alone together

Jane Hedley-Prole - What about me?

Geert Lovink - Networks without a cause

Evgeny Morozov - The netdelusion

Olga Goriunova - Databaseness

Sarah S. Jain - Prostheticpathology

Jacques Lacan - The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience