Artists Statement

The installation transforms the 2016 United States Presidential Election data into a large-scale immersive environment to provoke thought as to how social media assumes form and dominates the shaping of the future of a nation. By mapping election data into flickering lights, ticking sounds, and the exchange of fluid between IV bags, the installation recounts Twitter activates on the topic from February 2016 to the election date of November 8, 2016. It exposes the inner mechanisms of a world where true human tweets and tweets generated by Twitter Bots mutually influence each other and propagate inseparably as a combined voice. The installation allows the examination of the machine world infiltration that shifted the generative entropic propagation of social media influence on this U.S. election, and provides a physical space for contemplating the significant challenges social media post in our understanding of the social fabric and the radical transformation of the ways in which we now relate to each other.

• Jiayi Young, Assistant Professor of Design, University of California Davis, California, USA. Her inquiries lie within the emergent and experimental field of digital media with an emphasis on the cross-disciplinary areas of design that integrates the arts, the sciences with cutting edge technology. Her current research and creative work are focused on constructing data-driven sensor-enabled interfaces, installations, real-time projection graphics, participatory performances, and immersive environments in cultural and public places with a goal of creating generative energy to engage the public in social dialogue. Using multidisciplinary approaches, her work examines contemporary society including the culture of consumption, the programming and exploitation of the feminine, cultural assimilation, and personal identity. Leveraging social media, crowd-sourced media, and user-created content, she sets up scenarios and creates conditions to make visible empathetic relationship between people in the presence of contemporary culture. Her work invites the public to participate in order to come in close contact with an experience that engages the rethinking of the human condition. Jiayi Young actively exhibits and lectures nationally and internationally. At the University of California, Davis, she also co-directs Leonardo LASER speaker series. jiayiyoung.info                                    arts.ucdavis.edu/faculty-profile/jiayi-young
• Shih-Wen Young, USA