User:Mihail Bakalov/Trimester 4/GraduateResearchSeminar/ProjectProposal2
RESEARCH DIRECTION
Through researching the filtered information provided by Facebook's newsfeed I want to explore how it shapes my perception and constructs my identity.
Introduction:
The goal of this project is building a narrative in the form of a fictional documentary story/film from the filtered world that Facebook is presenting to me. Focusing on how this information describes, reflects and effects me, creating an image of me through constructing my personal online world.
This project builds on Plato's Allegory of the cave and the idea of constructing a referential notion of the real world. More particular in Plato's idea of how people ascribed forms to the shadows taken to be real, which are as close as the people get to viewing reality. In my opinion a similar process can be seen happening nowadays in on-line social networks. Users by feeding information to the system, such as likes and interests, construct a bases for the function of the system. From the input the algorithm defines what to present to the user. The creation of the personalized feed is constructed from invisible functions which make decisions what to display, resulting into a filtered version, shifted and translated by the system.
RESEARCH QUESTION
As we spend more and more time in on-line social networks, Facebook becomes a big source of information for a lot of users. Focusing on the huge effect on people's perception, I'd like to research what is the influence projected from the information that is circulating there. My main quest would be gathering more knowledge on what kind of reality are these components constructing for me and in return how does that construct my on-line identity.
PROJECT PROTOTYPING/EXPERIMENTING
An example of what the outcome that I want to produce is in some ways similar to these works:
– "I love Alaska" from Lennert & Sander - What I find as a similar point to my project is the narration, which is a retelling of the digital footprint from the person. What is achieved by stating the search query is a simplistic straightforward description a personal character. The internet searches are like questions, dealing with topics from everyday live and personal issues, which manage to capture different aspects of the self.
- The Love Machine – From this project I want to focus on the exploration of the function of the facebook algorithms. What happens when you feed in specific data, with what result do you end up and how big is its influence.
- The Oulipo - The most facinating thing I want to give as an example from the Oulipo is the potentiality of interpretation. The fictional element which a meaning can have, this I find as a similarity to my project. How text can be told in a different way with another meaning.
Taking the content from this environment and social circle and focusing on the idea that it lays an effect on me. The reflection of the components from the newsfeed I would like to use as constructing my self-portrait. By using the data, I don't want to do data analysis, but rather that I want to use the information as a bases for my narrative. In text further on I will explain what my experimenting has being so far.
The portrait would be a layout/a map of all the content placed on it. It's specific order will be decided by me, it would reflect the normal way I read the newsfeed. The content that enters the narrative is not all the content displayed to me by the algorithm, it's only the content that I have read and seen. This selection of the posts is based on what has influenced me.
During my current exploration I found ways to point out some of the method which are typical for and through which the system is functioning. I am taking the element of non-sequentiality in the results that the facebook newsfeed produces and using it in my approach of building the self-portrait of influencing external elements. Taking the out of sequence element and pushing/taking it to the extreme, breaking the feed into small bits, which are left for the user to be explored in a non-linear way. The outcome will lead into an audio-visual story/film/narration about my constructed identity.
Prototypes:
1st tryout: In this experiment each image contains a newsfeed. It has the visuals taken from the post and the narration, text turned into speech. https://vimeo.com/115192688
2nd tryout: In this experiment features a narration structure where a post from the newsfeed will be broken down into sentences. Each sentence will fill a pixel. A arrangment of the bits of the post would be linear, one after another horizontally put, structuring the portrait.
3rd tryout: This is a working prototype, not a mock-up. It has the same narration structure as the 2nd prototype. A person can navigate through the image with the arrows on the keyboard.
https://vimeo.com/116465103