ALIASING
2018
The ALIASING exhibition reflects on how self-image and representation are constructed in social media, particularly Facebook. It looks at the processes of representing oneself and fabricating multiple personas through the use of social media; how these get scattered and transformed in the online world. It looks at social media as a self-feeding ecosystem that learn from data we provide and creates restorative and self-reassuring frameworks, also known as filter bubbles.
An alias is a false name used to conceal one's identity. In computing, aliasing is the use of aliases to designate files, commands; in signal processing, aliasing means misidentification, it is an effect that causes different signals to become indistinguishable (or aliases of one another) when sampled.
Our presence on social media is always performative, and sometimes people seem quite different in their social media behavior from how I know them in real life. While technically connecting people and shortening distances between them, social media also creates a strong separation between me and my social circles. It has happened that my Facebook friends do not recognize me in real life. I talk to them through a wall.
Two kinetic and interactive installations and one video piece reflect on these phenomena by mirroring, imitating, and simulating, and materialize the constructions of representation in social media. They make visible the learning process, the dynamic and logic of the ecosystem, which we as users are immersed in and reinforce. These three works offer the visitor different degrees of control but as a whole they bring forth a system that you can play with while being played by. Much as the ecosystem of social media itself.
The exhibition has been realized with the support of Taike, Media Lab Helsinki and Aalto studios.
ph: Virpi Velin
ph: Virpi Velin
ph: Virpi Velin
ph: Virpi Velin
ph: Virpi Velin
ph: Virpi Velin
ph: Virpi Velin
ph: Virpi Velin
This exhibition is based on the construction of a simple ecosystem that puts in dialogue one’s presence and actions in the space of the gallery and in social media, in this case Facebook. The ecosystem treats people as agents and it exposes its rules and the processes sustaining it.
In Training, the visitor is observed by a sensor that analyses and tries to categorize the quality of his or her motion using machine learning algorithms (Adaptive Resonance theory[1]). With time also new categories appear depending on the degree of similarity of the stimulus, in this case the motion, to what the machine has learned before. Every time a new movement is detected, a labeled visual representation of it is posted on the Facebook page Aliasing2018.
The work made of mirrors titled Aliasing is set into motion every time a new post appears on the Aliasing2018 page
Hidden layers portrays a person wearing a VR headset while drawing dots and lines in space, exercising with invisible threads and testing how they move. A network structure is being formed.
Hidden layers, Training and Aliasing loosely refer to three stages of the construction of a neural network[2]: the design phase made of nodes and connections, the training and the real-time feeding with new inputs.
To visit and post on the Aliasing2018 page, please visit:
https://www.facebook.com/Aliasing2018/
Hidden layers
2018
1-ch video, 3.40 s
Concept: Roberto Pugliese
Cinematography: Onna Pluciennik
Performer: Emma Fält
Training
2018
Kinetic objects, depth sensor, monitor
Aliasing
2018
27 moving mirrors, internet connection
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_resonance_theory