Shadowstalker
Often art can expose issues more clearly than other mediums.
A show opened at The Shed this week called Manual Override. It is about the increasing power of technology in our lives and our inability to control it.
There is a piece in the show by the artist Lynn Hershman Leeson (whose Electronic Diaries form the spine of the show) called Shadowstalker.
In Shadowstalker, you enter your email address
And the work showcases your “digital shadow”:
Here is what my digital shadow contains:
Of course, none of this will surprise most people. We all know the Internet knows an awful lot about us.
But Lynn has managed to express it vividly in art and that has a powerful effect.
If you are in NYC, stop by The Shed and see Manual Override. The entire show is great. And try to see the Agnes Denes show too. It is also terrific.
Comments (Archived):
Will do, back in town next week.More and more are collective responses to art in public places seem to function to me in many ways how the ancient agora functioned 2500 years ago.
Something new coming out of this ‘digital darkness’ will be the moment. I want technology to tell me something i don’t know about myself. That would be progress.
Mt borg associates think the same
…?
“technology to tell me something i don’t know about myself. That would be progress.”just my take on it!!
Hmmm One of your older posts is now my benchmark (and the antitheses of AI)https://www.kickstarter.com…
It would be cool and spookier if it “talked through the output” like the 2001 Space Odyssey voice of Hal the Computer.
The last two shows we’ve produced at Any One Thing have made use of these techniques to bring the story home to our guests. In theatre, it’s less about how ‘impressive’ the data is to get, and more about how that’s presented to the guest.Imagine you’re being interrogated by someone about making calls to an international crime organisation. When you refute the claims, they hand you a crumpled piece of paper. As you slowly unfold it, you find it’s a phone bill. From your actual carrier. With calls from your phone number to the number in question. And then your phone vibrates – you’ve received a text…That scene doesn’t exist in any of our shows, but you can imagine writing something around that concept with the very same data that is presented in Fred’s photo.Technology is now inextricable from popular culture, and both story and medium need to be modernised to reflect that.Plus, it makes for some great entertainment 🙂