Project type: Master Project

University: University of Arts, Bremen

Term: April 2005 - April 2006

Supervisors: Prof. Kerstein, Jörn Schaffaf

Students: Alessandro Corsini, Marion Fröhlich, Florian Meier, Frank Wohlgemuth

Web-Link: http://www.digitalshadows.de/

Abstract:

What if your shadow suddenly started rebelling, refusing to follow you? What if it started to mimic you, changing your silhouette and movements so that it almost became impossible to recognize yourself? What if such a digital shadow of yourself already existed and in this very moment was already influencing your life?

Next to the real city exists a digital urban space that plays an increasingly important role in our communications. In this electronic world, we leave, through our social interactions, traces of ourselves. The immateriality of these makes their existence easy to forget. Furthermore, in contrast to physical traces that gradually fade away until they completely disappear, we know very little about what happens to them after their creation.

These traces constitute in the digital space a counterpiece of our physical body: a digital shadow. This digital shadow consists of the sum of all the digital data related to us. Not all of them are under our control. Without our awareness of it happening, they are collected, stored, modified and sold. The interactive installation “Digital Shadows” presents the relationship between real and digital identities in form of experience of the urban space.

Description:

Taking the city of Bremen as an example, we investigated the challenges for urban social existance generated by the digitalization of everyday life. Who are the new inhabitants of the digital cities? How do these identities come into being and evolve? Are we able to control them? How is technology revolutionizing social interaction and identity?

The digital shadows group decided to pose these questions in form of experience, embedded into the urban space. The aim of our project had shifted from imagining how technology could structure our experience of the urban space to using the urban space to experience how technology is structuring social interaction and identity; from the acritical development of a very innovative technology to be deployed in the city, to using the city, symbol and fundamental element of modern societies, to effectively point the finger at technology and at the critical issues it raises.

In the digital space exists a counterpiece of our physical body: a digital shadow. This digital shadow consists of the sum of all the digital data related to us. Not all of them are under our control. Without our awareness of it happening, they are collected, stored, modified and sold. The interactive installation “Digital Shadows” presents the relationship between real and digital identities in form of experience of the urban space.

The user, walking by, gets unawarely filmed by the camera. On a transparent surface, a world of shadows is to be seen. Numerous shadows and fragments of shadows move around on the screen. Suddenly, the user notices among these silhouettes and fragments, the traces of his own shadow, the projection of his own alienated video-image.

After the user has identified with his silhouette and gained confidence with it, he starts to play at the same time with it and with the other shadows. Suddenly, the digital image abandons the user, changes its appearance and starts to behave autonomously. The user has lost his power over his image, and has to passively observe and accept the fact that the fragments of his digital shadow have been stored in the archive for good. His traces cannot be erased anymore.

Finally, the system was presented on a public exposition: For two days it was possible for visitors to experience the increasing loss of control over their digital databodies through our installation at the Ziegenmarkt-area.