Physical Facebook and User Generated Art
Hugh Davies
ABC television Multiplatform
huedavies@gmail.com
http://analogueartmap.blogspot.com/
Connecting and reconnecting with other people has
traditionally been an activity associated with face to
face meetings. However, recent social networking
environments such as MySpace, LinkedIn and
particularly Facebook have given rise to new public
forums that offer digital specific interactions such as
posting photos, forming groups and distributing videos
and music. But how do these new interactions differ and
relate to traditional social exchanges in physical space?
The installation Map Me explores this issue by bringing
virtually back to reality. Map Me materialises the act of
networking so that the connections, the media and the Interaction instructions on the flier promoting for the Map Me
people appear in real time and space. exhibition
First, you create a profile for yourself using bits of only highlights the familiar keywords and axioms of
paper, drawings or business cards. You are encouraged the user generated generation: “personalisation”1 and
to bring small personal items such as photos from home “community is content”2 but also dilutes notions of
but stationery is also provided for the unprepared. On authorship and questions the authority of the artist as
completing your self fashioned profile, you can then creator.
hyperlink to the profiles of people that you know using
coloured wool and drawing pins. This wool traverses From a social perspective, Map Me raises questions
the space, highlighting the invisible lines of connection about the value, diversity and nature of the relationships
between individuals, describing the convoluted structure formed in digital congregations as compared to their
of social architecture. The resulting installation is a physical counterparts. Are connections made in
spatial and tactile version of a social networking page physical space of higher value than those made in an
like MySpace or Facebook. However, does this work online environment? Do social networking tools, UGC
have any implications for digital interaction? applications or physical networking events actually
foster new communities or do they just reinforce old
Map Me is both a celebration and a critic of digital ones? Does the resulting network of contacts enrich our
society. By presenting the digital and analogue combined, lives as social beings, or does it just supply another stage
it also pits them against one another. Map Me prompts to parade extroversion and competitive individualism?
the audience turned collaborators to evaluate physical
versus digital interaction, as they are encouraged to While Map Me can be read as a critical discussion of the
compare, combine and evolve rituals and tactics from cult and culture of online social networking applications,
both digital and physical experiences, and in doing so, its proximity in content and concept to these very
playfully develop new hybrids of interaction. While applications leaves it open to the same criticisms.
often shy to involve themselves at first, participants build
up confidence with each exchange and act of creativity But there is more at play here. Through its presentation
to gradually become competitive in their inventiveness. in art galleries and related cultural contexts, Map Me
The empowerment of the audience to expand and is regarded as an artwork that records and prompts
individualise the form and meaning of the work not relational aesthetics — interactions between audience
14TH INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON ELECTRONIC ART 133
Image from Map Me exhibition at 2007 Conflux Festival, NY.
Photograph: doryexmachina
members and the artist through the work.3 Conversely,
when similar interactions occur in an online environment, 1 Green, Hannah. Facer, Keri. Rudd, Tim. Dillon, Patrick.
they are generally considered low culture.4 What is the Humphreys, Peter. Personalisation and Digital Technologies.
http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/opening_
nature of this hierarchy of physical over digital? education/Personalisation_report.pdf. Accessed April 2008
2 Porter, Wayne. February 27, 2008. “Reality is fake, collisions
Digital art has been seen as culturally inferior to are real: Musings on Social Aspects of Media, Reality, Change
traditional art forms in many respects. Consider digital Agents & Random Experiments.” http://www.wayneporter.
painting as compared to oil on canvas, or 3D sculpture com/2008/02/27/the-summit-keynote/. Accessed April 2008
against their real space counterparts. Yet as the world 3 Bourriaud, Nicholas. 2002. Relational Aesthetics, English
has moved from a produce to service based economy, edition translated by Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods.
France: les presse du réel.
likewise art has shifted from being object based to
experience based. Surely digital technology has the 4 Hodgkinson, Tom. Jan 14, 2008. “With friends like these”
The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/
potential to dramatically improve the communication
jan/14/facebook. Accessed April 2008
and facilitate these experiences, but does it hold the
same creative and cultural gravity as experiences located
in the physical world? Even though the context is not
artistic, can the actual interactions on MySpace and
Facebook also be considered as relational aesthetics?
Or is this representative of a larger perception of digital
interaction as culturally inferior than analogue? What
does this mean for electronic art?
134 ISEA2008
