What are we watching? How are we watching it? Are we choosing what we watch? Or is it being artificially chosen for us? How do we define artificial?
Finding ourselves navigating these questions, analysing our social media use and reflecting on its algorithms agency; this piece invites the audience to explore our role as active interpreters on social media platforms and to challenge their, intended by design, widespread mode of passive consumption. Connecting tangible reality to our digital worlds, the immersive experience underscores user agency and urges participants to transcend mere scrolling and engage with social media as a space for meaningful interpretation and contribution.
This video art piece is activated by a performance where a live Instagram feed is simulated after fetching hundreds of real posts from Instagram with the hashtag ‘#artificial’ on them. These images are displayed at random intervals on a screen while generating sounds as they appear. The images are also juxtaposed with intervened real-life videos based on our visual interpretation of the different dictionary meanings of the word “artificial”.
On the sonorous side of the project, the generative music piece is initially born from a single iPhone notification sound which is played every time a new Instagram post image is displayed on the screen. This sound is then deconstructed, modified and layered until it creates a constantly evolving and attention-demanding rhythmic soundscape.
In dialogue with both Rancière’s Emancipated Spectator and Debord’s Society of the Spectacle ideas, the live performance is recorded and transformed into a looping video art piece exhibited in the gallery as a frozen-in–time snippet of a constantly evolving audience-mediarelationship.
By Celina Collot and Carlos Orti Roig
Video and sound
Presented at Kule as part of CTM program (Berlin, 2024)