By Julia Le, Nicholas Meng, Sarah Usher, Philip Yaghob
April 2024
Social Existence is an interactive surveillance art installation that explores what it means to exist in a digital world where we are constantly observed and places the viewer in the shoes of the observer and observed. Through our need to be constantly connected in this digital age, our information is being monitored, tracked and even sold with cameras and apps we use around us. Do we have autonomy over our information? What is being done with that information? These types of questions arise when thinking about how we are being surveilled.
This project questions how you, as the observed, would feel if you could see yourself being recorded without your consent and seeing what others have done and said with your image. On the opposite side, as the observer, how do you feel when you have gained the power to control the information freely as you wish?