Mark Farid Conceptual Art Talk
Mark Farid Conceptual Art Talk VIDEOS
Mark Farid Conceptual Art Talk PHOTOS
Mark offers a variety of projects to discuss during his TEDx-style talk
Seeing-I Project
Collaborating with clinical psychologists, neuroscientists, and professors from MIT and University of Cambridge, Mark developed an extraordinary psychological experiment where he experienced the world solely through other people’s eyes.
Enabled by new VR technology, this psychological art experiment delved into the effects of surveillance technologies on our personal experience and questioned how much of an individual's personality is inherent versus culturally conditioned.
Each morning, Mark put on a virtual reality headset and viewed the first-person perspective of a different person (the ’Other’), from the time they woke up to the time they went to bed. Each day, he experienced a new person's life, sharing the daily lives of people ranging from an asylum seeker to a teenager to a 72-year-old woman.
Every night, after the Other went to sleep, Mark would remove the VR headset and debrief with the project's clinical psychologist.
Data Privacy Project
In this investigation into the extent of data constantly and legally harvested, how it creates a profile of an individual, and its impact on digital anonymity and privacy, Mark shared his entire digital identity by distributing his login details to all his online accounts after a panel discussion. Within minutes, strangers had changed most of his passwords, from his online banking account to his Apple ID, effectively taking control of the accounts. The aim was to 'corrupt' or 'delete' the data by confusing and disguising Mark’s personality with whoever was using his account, ultimately rendering the data worthless.
From that point on, and for the next 6 months, Mark lived without a digital footprint. He constantly used and replaced pay-as-you-go phones and SIM cards, changed bank accounts, only paid in cash, bought weekly travel cards, and avoided using online platforms. Mark highlighted our current dependence on data-storing social platforms to maintain any sort of normal life. Without access to these platforms, Mark faced social isolation and recorded significant negative impacts on his social, financial, and mental well-being.
