Burn The Thinkery
Concept// Social media and the (dead) deep thinking is the subject of the installation Burn The Thinkery. Form// During the last three months, I have grown hemlock from seeds, exposing them to the light of a looping social media-based video. Research and Investigation// According to scientific research on a group of students from the University of Chicago*, young people interrupt their concentration during study at an average of every 31 seconds. Because they were checking phones—social media, messaging, and emails—they lost the capacity to stay focused on problems that required deep thinking. According to the same study, after 2010, the lack of deep thinking habits decreased dramatically the number of exceptional graduates who enter the science and technology institutes, adjunct to The University of Chicago. Other studies are proving, as well the addictive power of social media, digital entertainment platforms that are entering through electronic devices. In Burn The Thinkery, I take, on one hand, the idea that social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube are incapacitating entire generations to maintain long periods of concentration and think profoundly about a complex problems. The damage is irreversible and affects the whole life of the young person: social relations, professional career, and personality. As a metaphor, I took the Time of Socrates, and especially the classical tragedy Clouds of Aristophanes. There, in the end, the school of Socrates in Athens (The Thinkery) was burned. The arsonist claimed he was attacking the school because there was no longer any need for knowledge. Using hemlock, I refer to the real death of Socrates, who is at the fundament of Western civilization in any sense. (After growing hemlock with social media screens light in a time of quarantine from the middle of March till the end of April 2020 and my recent experience of being an online art teacher at the high school level for the last nine weeks, I can confirm with even more certainty my artist statement regarding the disappearance of concentration and deep thinking. //
*https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/advan.00097.2017
I LLLOVE U
Form and Content// This installation shows a love scene between the vibrator and a digital screen. The device uses over 50 different ways of “stimulating” the screen composed by the application. The screen "responds" with two videos made of unsolicited advertising of sexual stimulant drugs, dating sites, intimate underwear, and sexual objects, and devices. In addition, there is a love letter based on the privacy policy of the company owner of the device and the application. In a gallery space, the same two videos from the screen are projected on the walls, and the love letter is printed and hung at the beginning of the installation. Research and investigation// The installation is based on my research on smart devices that invade privacy. An explicit example of such inventions is a device that I called "I LLLove U," and it is owned by an (Internet Of Things- IOT) company, which I named XXXXXX XXXXXX . "I LLLove U,".It is a smart device for private use, and it is driven by an Internet application that collects an enormous amount of confidential data when it is in use. It includes, but is not limited to, the collection of the user's location; body parts touched, voice and sounds, ways and duration, connections with other smart devices, age, gender, email, etc. The company collects the data of its users and sells it to third parties. The reason for the appropriation is explained with the purchase of the device. The day I had it, I installed the application on my phone and later put it in function. A few hours later, I started to receive unsolicited advertising in my email, Facebook, and home address. I was attacked daily with advertising of sexual stimulant drugs, dating sites, intimate underwear, tons of other private objects, and devices. The love letter is based on the privacy policy of the company.
TIME STREET
Concept// The everyday life of everyone is the source of Big Data. The Big Data, through the algorithms, returns to everyone as predictions. Digital media predictions shape the facts that drive everyone’s decision making. Subject matter// Digital screens project questions and statements about Digital Capitalism and its methods and consequences. They simulate the monitors with the share prices in the NYSE on Wall Street. Behind the monitors, on the walls, the same images are projected on a large scale, resembling Times Square advertising panels. A sound of marching groups to and from the visuals gives the idea of a disciplined society. Context// Everyone's decisions about what they consume shape Wall Street because the share prices depend on what we buy. Times Square advertising digital screens shape our choices, telling us what we like. The digital screens on Wall Street (NYSE) and the ones on Times Square are two faces of the same coin.
WATCHER & ORACLE
Context// The path of human beings through digital media is controlled by surveillance and prediction/manipulation. We are watched, recorded, and stored and, on the base of that, we act in a predicted way. Subject matter// At one side The Watcher is an unidentifiable narrow cut of a face that could be anybody. The viewer feels watched but is not able to recognize by whom. The Watcher is silent. On the other side is The Oracle. It is a manipulated video projection inside a ball, with beautiful colors and the voices of the four digital Oracles talking about privacy in front of the technological world and US Congress. //