User:SN/Graduate proposal

WHAT?

My interests lie in data visualization and generative art. The main piece of my project will be a video installation based on a diary of my "digital routine." I also want to make a book based on series of images (100 in total) and small notes, that I take every day. Right now I have a script that takes screenshots every 10 seconds. It consistently works on the background while I use my computer. I also collect data about the amount of time I'm spending in different applications and what sites I'm visiting. In my intention is to collect data for 100 days, analyze and use it to highlight the anxiety about losing myself in a digital routine.

WHY?

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Recently I was reading an essay by Boris Groys. I caught myself on reading one paragraph for half an hour. I just couldn't understand what he was writing about. Words, sentences — all was clear, but the meaning was fading away from me.

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Often I catch myself on staring at the screen powerless to start to work. Such moments scare me.

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This morning I spent few hours checking my Instagram and Facebook accounts. I wrote few comments and put some likes, read articles and watched some videos. I barely remember which photos I commented and what about were my comments. For half an hour I was scrolling my Instagram feed without any attention to content. Just repetitive movements of my finger on the surface of the screen and the void in my memory. I think articles were about new discoveries as some time ago I subscribed to few science magazines and NG. Now is 8 in the evening and I cannot remember any sufficient detail of what I read this morning. This activity didn't bring me joy or satisfaction, yet my morning starts and evening finishes with checking social networks. It became a reflex: you get up, clean your teeth and check the feed in social networks, the mind is not involved.

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Today I printed out an entire ebook. I cannot concentrate while reading long texts on my Ipad. Reading from the screen takes too much time.

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For 20 min I was turning on and off Hide button on one of the layers in Photoshop. I was working on the web page and tried to figure out the best way to display and structure significant amount of information. I doubt whether this monotone activity helped me to find the solution for my problem, rather avoid doing it.

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This evening I ordered some goods in an online shop. Usually, the shipping information is filled automatically by the google autofill function. But something went wrong and I had to fill it myself. I couldn't remember my phone number.

These notes I take while dealing with the digital world. Smartphone and laptop have become an essential part of my life. I used to think that they help me to expedite my work. Apps with smart interfaces, plugins, and scripts that are used to optimize my workflow. But at some moment this tools stopped to be just tools, I became dependent on them. They changed the way I work, think and feel. They affected my memory and perception.

HOW?

Right now I'm collecting as much data as I can and experimenting on the way to visualize it.

TIMETABLE

10.01.17 — 20.04.17 — collecting data, experimenting with representation, makeup of the book.

01.05.17 — deadline for the book.

01.06.17 — deadline for video installation.

Relation to previous practice

Relation to a larger context

Nicholas Carr in his essay "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" wrote "I've had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn't going – so far as I can tell – but it's changing. I'm not thinking the way I used to think."

Tatiana Chernigovskaya scientist in the field of neuroscience, psycholinguistics and theory of mind in one of her lectures said that we are what we remember. Our memory is not a box with pictures or any other kind of information, not a library or database; our memory is the processes that take place in our brain. These processes are always new. Every time we recall a certain event, we recall new one. They change who we are and technology changes them.

References

Nicholas Carr The Shallows: How the Internet is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember

Sherry Turkle Alone Together, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit

Charlie Giar Digital Culture

Katherine Hayles "How we became Posthuman"

Michael Foucault "Technologies of the Self"

"Aesthetics of the Error" Timothy Barker

"The Glitch Momentum" Rosa Menkman

"The work of art in the age of digital recombination" Jos de Mul

"Form + Code" Casey Reas

"Post-media Aesthetics" Lev Malovich

"The language of New Media" Lev Malovich

"The new Philosophy of New Media." Mark Hancen

"After Modern Art." David Hopkins