SELF-AWARENESS
A collaboration project with Hugo Vargas, focused on hyperindividualism and consumerism as instruments for social control in young generations. Based on the text “Liberated Anomie in Generation Next: Hyperindividualism, Extreme Consumerism, and Social Isolationism (2010)” written Joh-JongHuanga, Ming-YiiHuang and Fei-KaiSyuc in which a now most undeniable present is determined by a self-centered life that anesthetizes the sense of community or the desire to participate in civic life, having instead concerns about endless consumption, specially through digital media. This artwork is a comment on the consequences that social media influence and the use of technological devices have had on generations that were taught that it is more important to be instead of to do, and the political-social passivity (and therefore the control) that this entails.
Implementing a speech jammer, the user constantly loses her speaking ability by listening to herself while trying to read the aforementioned text, while displayed on a screen in top of the image of the user's face captured by a webcam. While reading with a loud voice, the text moves up, the image slowly distorts and the delay for the voice becomes greater. If the user is able to read the text completely, without stopping, a winning screen explains the relation between what physically happened and the constant feedback we receive from digital media (and its negative effects).
While the form of the artwork and gameplay show to be quite ludic and simple, most of people playing get quickly disrupted by the confusion imposed to their brains, experimenting in own flesh their vulnerability to technology added the constant feedback of one's self.
