Calvin Lok Creative

ABOUT

This was an open call for artworks and interactive installations for the Royal Academy's RA Lates event, "Digital (Dis)Connection" undertaken in my second year of university. The brief was to produce a piece of work or performance to complement the RA's Q4 Exhibition featuring Ai Wei Wei. Inspired by Ai Wei Wei's work on the theme of surveillance, I came up with the idea of physically representing anonymity on the internet, and worked with two coursemates to develop it into an installation for the night.

Conceptually, I(WE) AM(ARE) ANONYMOUS , is an interactive video installation that seeks to reveal the duality and complexity of being anonymous. On one hand, there is a freedom and power that cannot be culled, on the other, credibility and responsibility become trivial. The installation will invite users to create content which will be visually broadcast in the exhibition space while in an anonymous state. The installation comes in two parts, creation and propagation.

The creation component is an “anonymous zone” where users can create content under the guise of anonymity. Within the “anonymous zone”, the participant can see outside, but the onlookers will not be able to know who the participant is. This represents the power of anonymity. In this “anonymous zone”, the user will be filmed, but their face will not be shown. This emphasises the idea of hiding in plain sight through anonymity and the freedom it affords.

In the propagation component, the scene in which the participants will be filmed is as such; an unknown person walks towards a lone keyboard. Their face concealed by a “mirror mask” as they type some words on the keyboard. Subsequently, the person leaves the booth. This scene will be broadcast on the in the room. The “mirrored mask” would have the images of the onlookers reflected upon it, and represents the idea that an individual becomes the collective and the collective is the individual through anonymity, thus both trivialising and empowering their existence. Additionally, as the content will not be filtered, it will reflect the presence or absence of social responsibility and morality once I(WE) AM(ARE) ANONYMOUS.

The whole project was also hacked together for under £100, including transport, as an additional challenge to our team. We decided that this additional detail would be a satisfying expression of the independent "hacking" culture associated with anonymity.

MADEIT CREDITS

  • Royal AcademyClient

I(WE) Am(ARE) ANONYMOUS

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