Mark Farid Conceptual Art Talk
Mark Farid Conceptual Art Talk VIDEOS
Mark Farid Conceptual Art Talk PHOTOS
Mark provides a choice of projects to discuss as part of his TedX style talk
Seeing-I Project
Working in conjunction with clinical psychologists, neuroscientists and MIT and University of Cambridge Professors Mark created an incredible psychological experiment in which he will only see the world through other people’s eyes.
Made possible through new VR technology this psychological art experiment examined the implications of surveillance technologies on our personal experience and questioned how much of the individual is an inherent personality and how large a portion of the individual is conditioned through cultural identity.
Each morning Mark put on a virtual reality headset and watched the first-person point-of-view of a different person (the ‚Other‘), from the moment they got up in the morning, to the moment they went to sleep in the evening. Each day, Mark watched a different person’s life, sharing the experience of a range of people from an asylum seeker to a teenager to a 72-year-old woman.
Each night, after the Other went to sleep, Mark would take off the VR headset and speak to the projects‘ clinical psychologist.
Data Privacy Project
In this exploration of the levels of data constantly and legally harvested, how this creates a portrait of an individual and its impact on digital anonymity and privacy, Mark gave away his entire digital identity by distributing his login details to all his online accounts after a panel discussion. Within minutes complete strangers had changed most of his passwords, from his online banking account to his Apple ID, effectively making the accounts no longer his. The intent of this was to 'corrupt' or 'delete' the data being stored by confusing and disguising Marks personality with that of whoever was using his account at the time. Essentially making any of the data collected, worthless.
From that point on, and for the following 6 months, Mark lived without a digital footprint. Constantly using and replacing pay-as-you-go phones and sim cards, changing bank accounts, only paying in cash, purchasing weekly travel cards and refusing to use online platforms, Mark illuminated our current dependence on data-storing, social platforms to be able to live any sort of normal existence. Without access to these platforms mark experienced social isolation and recorded a notable negative impact on his cultural and financial life, as well as, his mental stability.
