Transfer of Self Over a Network Connection, 2017,
HDU foam, digital still projection, vinyl print on acrylic,
74 x 76 x 16.25 inches

the compressed individual,
electronic mail sent to Acxiom data brokerage firm

In this project I explore how financial actors in the data economy use network connections and behavioral prediction AI to exploit our preconscious labor as device users. Everyday objects like vaporizers and tennis balls are scanned into digital space using photogrammetry and 3D modeling software. These virtual copies are then further deformed through a series of procedures involving open-source image recognition algorithms. These couplings of physical and digital objects are then used as purposely absurd bargaining assets, in a sequence of heavily-researched, but equally absurd emails to various data brokerage firms, composed to renegotiate the terms of my employment, which up until now, through the buying and selling of my personal and predicted behavior data by these third party firms, has remained invisible, coerced, and by proxy. The texts of these emails, along with the physical/digital object pairs forming the bases of negotiation, are then assembled in the manner of a flowchart, aimed at emphasizing how value is abstracted from the user, without direct consent, within the data economy, while indicating the gap in being, resulting from monetizing actions, which, contrary to providing the ‘data subject’ greater knowledge about themselves, are instead effectively designed to bypass distinctions between what it means to be a person, and what it means to be an object.

Photographs: Sean Fader