ii.
GENERATION LOSS
IDENTITY IN THE SURVEILLANCE AGEBranding / Editorial / Exhibition / Motion / Photography / Print / Research / Speculative / Systems / Typography / Writing07-15-24
Master’s Thesis
Modern society is highly digitized, with many elements of the human experience, such as communications, events, interests, and likenesses, have been quantified into large amounts of data and diffused online. To power new algorithmic technologies, this resource is increasingly scraped and utilized by corporate interests for profit, transforming these pieces of our identity into products.
Using my experience surviving cancer as an entry point into the digitization of identity, this thesis uses writing, design experiments, graphic design, audiovisual installation, and editorial interviews to explore how quantification, commodification, and surveillance alter our fundamental sense of ourselves.
IDENTITY SCROLLS
Starting with the digitization of memories, “Identity Scrolls” was the first design experiment. They are small scripts of memories, fashioned like film reels, created to follow the philosophy of Historiography. Using the intentional inclusion, exclusion, and juxtaposition of different memories, each reel contains a specific story of identity. These scrolls were made separately, but over time, they intertwined: a jumbled assemblage of events; a non-linear, ambiguous identity. Making these scrolls gave clear narratives to my own past; clear stories with a beginning, middle, and end. But as they tangled together, the messy scraps felt more authentic than any narrative I constructed.
VISUALIZING DIGITAL DECAY
Databending refers to the deliberating alteration of a media file, through unusual software usage or intentional file damage. “Visualizing Digital Decay” was the second design experiment, finding a visual language by closely scrutinizing that process. Starting with a self-portrait, I intentionally damaged the file through various means over and over as the imagery distorted and warped into unexpected colors and forms. Instead of mourning the slow loss of information, I found beauty in a digital decay that mirrors the organic. “Databending” is a cancerous process. It takes an existing network, functioning together in a coherent system, and it alters its most basic elements as that machine mutates, stumbles, and falls apart. Freezing those moments, let me find a visual language for the rest of the thesis as I examined all the data behind a digital identity slowly becoming undone.
GALLERY OF THE DIGITALIZED SELF
The “Gallery of the Digitalized Self” is the third design experiment: an audiovisual project to visualize the theoretical identity of the “digitalized self”: the emergent form of identity lying between our physical bodies and our online data. Installed for the Pratt Communications Design Thesis Capstone showcase, it contains four animated displays, each with an accompanying audio track. Each of these “portraits” is created from opposing elements from the same individual: a person’s physical attributes intertwined with their online footprint. The audiovisual portrait oscillates between the two selves both slowly and suddenly, visually and sonically. Our digital selves both empower and burden us. But we can’t deny how these digital homunculi are a growing part of ourselves in a time when culture, communication, and commerce are all mediated by digital space.
CONVERSATIONS IN BINARY
The final exploration is “Conversations in Binary”. Concluding the project, these two publications document two separate conversations with the same individual: Clara Belitz: a data ethics researcher and an old friend. First, we discussed the growing problems of surveillance and generation technologies alongside possible solutions. Second, we discussed an impactful memory of illness, something that only now exists in data and our recollection. Fluctuating between these two conversations bridges the academic and the emotive, conveying the practical issues of a digital economy while connecting it to the real stories we’ve lost in quantification.
GENERATION LOSS
This work culminated in a written thesis of the same title. Including the previous design work, it also details the effects quantification, commodification, and surveillance of our data affects individuals as well as discussing various data rights solutions that may combat it. The written thesis
I was selected from Pratt MFA Communications Design cohort to represent the school and present my capstone thesis for the AIGA Fresh Grad 2024 showcase.
Data isn’t just an abstraction. It's somebody’s labor, it's somebody’s memories, it’s somebody’s identity. It’s a piece of a person. And if we think people have inherent value, then this data has inherent value too. We should be mindful to the generation loss that results from taking human experience and stripping into its most basic parts and advocate for a society that provides dignity to our data. Our own identities have value because they are ours.
This thesis can also be found on the Pratt MFA Graduate Inquiries website.