Fragmented

By Ieva Gailiušaitė

Since the invention of the internet people have transferred parts of their lives into a virtual world. In more recent years, the expansion of social media has made it possible to almost fully exist online, while expressing a chosen lifestyle. For some this has became a space of refuge, for others, it has escalated their most toxic, self-centered and asocial tendencies.

Ieva Gailiusaite's multi-media installation Fragmented is an investigation of masks and filters that the internet enables users to wear in the public virtual spaces, comment sections and forums. In this work, Ieva entertains the idea that the transition to the virtual is less a site for liberation but rather a fragmentation of our otherwise multiangular psyche into flat slogan generators, obsessed with singular ideas: context-less and absurd.

Research

Based on the data collected from the platform the author used the most for opinion expression, public communication and image sharing- Facebook, Ieva worked with her own output: comments and facebook posts. Having to look back on 10 years of these naive, obnoxious or funny outbursts she made a realisation, that not only is the ‘Facebook her’ a different person from the self-perceived real life self, but it is not even a single persona.

The initial idea of the project was to challenge the urge of reaction on social media by turning a mirror towards oneself and exposing the ridiculouslness of one's online behaviour. The work is of a self reflective nature.

Who am I online? What causes me to burst into reaction on social media? How are my real life values converted into expressions in virtual world? These are some of the main research questions Ieva explored through the project.

Sources

[1] Rhys Edmonds (2020) Anxiety, loneliness and Fear of Missing Out: The impact of social media on young people’s mental health. Available from https://www.centreformentalhealth.org.uk/blogs/anxiety-loneliness-and-fear-missing-out-impact-social-media-young-peoples-mental-health

[2] TIMES (2016) How Trolls Are Ruining the Internet. Available from https://time.com/4457110/internet-trolls/

Data

To accelerate this investigation Ieva has downloaded all the data from Facebook- the comments, posts, messages, likes, shares and pokes (remember those?) from the past 12 years of her presence on this social media platform.

After going through it she dove into the most intriguing sets by tracking them on her timeline and making screenshots.

Prototypes & Experiments

This easy availability of knowledge poses an epistemological query: we perceive it as “attaina ble” without considering the actual limit of our intellect. As an evolved society, we shouldn’t be blind to the fact that the constant abuse of technological devices is changing the way we perceive reality.