MFA Thesis: Chatsubo 2016
Social Club, Social Life, Social Media. The Spectacle of Existence
Facebook, Foamcore, Contact Paper, Ferns, Found Objects, Addressable LEDs, 3D Animations
We live in a physical reality that has merged seamlessly with digital reality. Technology is praised as a solution to our problems but is always spoken as if it is in some near future. Chatsubo examines this phenomenon with the lens that our near future is happening now, that technology—our promised savior—has been co-opted for surveillance in our daily lives. In order to circumvent these technologies, such as computer vision, one must become more of a spectacle by donning a cyberpunk fashion and style that disrupts its ability to identify you. This project creates digital and physical camouflages to obfuscate and disrupt our shared data by utilizing false locations interacted with real ones. Using social media as its platform for creating ‘realness’, Chatsubo stages its whereabouts using geolocation and active accounts on Facebook and Instagram. Our image is actively mediated through social media algorithms, where the spectacle rises to the top—receiving the most engagement. With this project’s undertaking, I pose the question, “What extent do we need to go through in order to protect ourselves in today’s world while still participating in online society?”
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