[ISEA2019] Artists Statement:  Vytautas Jankauskas, Jon Flint, Felipe de Souza, Aline Martinez, Joana Mateus, Clement Bouttier & Ryan Dzelzkalns (Cached Collective) – Cached

Artists Statement

Arduino uno, Intel NUC PC, LCD screen, mirror, speaker, thermal printer, 77x48x10 cm.

Cached is a personalised interactive experience that engages with the repercussions of our individual online presence. Our online personality is cached and used to create a digital model of each of us to learn as much as possible. The cached experience offers a glimpse of your digital self, revealing how the outline of your online activity is quantified, interpreted, and profiled by contemporary social media algorithms.                                                                        Upon entering the room, the spectator is left alone with a glowing tablet, prompting to log in. Once they have connected, a mirror lights up and greets the spectator by their name. The following experience takes the form of personalised audiovisual storytelling, to illustrate just how your activities online contribute to the way in which machines see you.                              Based on a textual analysis of your social media posts, Cached reveals your character traits, interests and consumer preferences. Using IBM Watson, the installation generates a psychological profile that describes your personality, behaviors, and predilections. It illustrates how machines are learning to perceive you as a social creature and the assumptions they make about you. At the end of the experience, all personal data is erased, and the visitor receives a unique printed receipt containing a summary of the analysis. It is the only record of their data, which can be shared, kept secret, or destroyed at their convenience.                                            The interpretation of this sort might not be as accurate as direct data on Clicks, GPS points or biometrics. Nevertheless, the very idea that we are perceived as social beings rather than quantitative datasets raises the data privacy discourse to a new level. Cached is a user-friendly wake-up call; the experience invites you to critically think about the reflection of your personal online behavior casts.

  • Cached Collective (Vytautas Jankauskas, Jon Flint, Felipe de Souza, Aline Martinez, Joana Mateus, Clement Bouttier & Ryan Dzelzkalns) is an international group of creatives of diverse backgrounds, who are dedicated to exploring how technology influences our individual lived realities. Because of the impenetrable way that modern technology functions, the Cached Collective strives to design impactful experiences that can be easily understood by a wide audience. The Cached Collective makes the intangible tangible. The Cached Collective creates impactful experiences that delve into data, algorithmic complexity, and obscure infrastructure, especially focusing on how these affect the individual. The Cached Collective first met during a summer residency in the South of France, the Hive. Each of us brings distinct expertise to our collaborations that we leverage to create unique, multidisciplinary experiences. This broad base of specialities—from engineering to fashion design, from poetry to programming— allows us to approach our topics with a unique eye.