1.4 Living in Parallel
By Susanne Spek & Anne Nelissen
Once upon a time, when technology was scarce, every aspect of life was seasoned with a splash of uniqueness. Nowadays we live in a world of parallels. Identical duplicates of some of your most precious personal items, are held by a hundred or even a thousand other people around the world as well. Can we escape the current of becoming all the same? Or are we doomed to start modifying ourselves as intensively as we have modified the world around us?
With our work we want to trigger people to think about similarity and uniqueness in the world and – even more important – the interplay between these and technologies. Our work takes the visitor through the past, present and future: from before the Industrial Revolution to current technologies and beyond.
Before the rise of machinery, products were never exactly the same. New technologies and machines resulted in mass production and homogeneity. With the possibilities technology brought us until today, it becomes possible to adjust not only the world around us but also ourselves. Plastic surgery goes further and further in which people change their appearance. DNA modification is also on the rise, in which it may become possible to adjust our inner self in the future. But what happens if we have the ability to produce the perfect human? Do we all adapt ourselves to our homogeneous perfect image of who we want to be?
Implementation
Our project has taken the form of a triptych. During the process, ideas for two additions - in between the different parts of the triptych - arose. The final project consisted of three hatches with two poles in between which connected the hatches.
The first part of our triptych represents the time before machinery and mass production [1]. At that time, the technology was simply not advanced enough to make everything identical. Besides that, many hands were needed to create something that was quite simple. In our work, the visitors create a handwritten fairy tale (Snow White) book collectively. The book contains many mistakes and the written text is never identical. However, although the handwritings are completely different and the text is not perfect, we are all familiar with this famous old fairy tale. This suggests that even in early times, humans had some inner tendency to strive for homogeneity.
The first column (in between the first and second hatch) shows the rise of machinery and the rise of the mass industry [2]. The images and video together already point at the changes these technologies caused in our society and us as human beings.
The second hatch represents the current situation of a world wherein almost all products are a result of mass production [3]. With the question ‘Which one is your favorite?’ we point to the ways in which mass produced products can still be of great personal value. Can you still make things your own?
The second column bridges the product homogeneity represented in the second hatch to a future of human homogeneity [4]. Different kinds of apps, for example Snapchat and Instagram, provide pretty-making-filters. The presentation of these apps refers to the dishonesty of pictures online and the conservation of a homogeneous beauty ideal.
The last hatch takes a look at the future [5]. The visitors are confronted with the question about how unique we are as humans. The news articles show the possibilities to adjust ourselves from the outside as well as the inside.
[1] A big book was placed on a table that stands in front of a big white wall on which an introduction and the instructions are written. The visitor puts on headphones and clicks the play button. The visitor will then hear a sentence from the fairy tale Snow White and must write it down in the book. Every visitor provides a part of the fairy tale in the book.
To make the buttons and play the audio, we used a Makey Makey and wrote the code in Processing. We have cut an audio file into pieces so that we have all the sentences from the fairy tale in a separate file. By touching the pen and choosing a button, the audio file is played through the headphones.
[2] Four pictures were shown of situations before and after the introduction of machinery. In between the pictures an iPad was placed which portrayed a short clip from Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin.
[4] We attached several phones to the wall on which different filter-using-apps – mostly Snapchat and Instagram – were displayed.
[3] 3 identical shirts were hanging before a wall with their product number displayed beside it. At the side of the hatch the printed text with "Which one is your favorite?" was displayed.
[5] We used newspaper articles on genetic modification and plastic surgery as a background. In front of the newspaper articles we placed a mirror with the text:
Are we all becoming the same?
Are we already all the same?
Be unique.
We chose to spray this on a mirror because people are confronted with themselves while reading.
