Artist Statement:
My creation project, Emotionscapes, is a digital art piece that aims to critique the way we interact with social media and how algorithms can affect our mood. It is a web-based and interactive art experience that visualizes the audiences’ emotional response to memes and internet artifacts on the landscape, which is a metaphor for our mental headspace and mood. The landscape in Emotionscapes changes based on the collective sentiment, and manifest as changes in color, tone and weather. The interactivity in this piece, taking post-internet practices shapes the final output, breaking down the boundary between creator and viewer.
I created Emotionscapes to highlight the subtle impact that our digital interactions can have on our emotional and mental states. Even though we might scroll through social media posts for a few minutes and then move on with our day, the things we see have the potential to stay with us longer than we realize. They affect not only our moods and perspectives but can also shape the way we perceive important topics, such as political issues. Often times, the constant stream of content reflects the ideas and thoughts we already have, reinforcing them and creating a false sense of validation by providing an “echo chamber.” Similar to this, the Emotionscapes landscape doesn’t easily shift to the next feeling. It takes time and more scrolling for those emotions to fade or be replaced, but the effects are often deeper than we expect.
Post-internet art is work that is aware of the internet as a condition, not just a medium – in the way that it reflects on networked culture and social structures (Chan, 2024). Emotionscapes was built off of this idea, where the webpage is a space of interaction, and also a sort of emotional feedback loop. My work reflects the fact that in modern digital culture, our feelings are often reduced to data and numbers, which are only measures of analysis and training data for algorithms. Much like the machine learning model gathering the comments sentiment in the background of Emotionscapes, social media algorithms only see our feelings, likes and comments as data to be shaped and utilized. Both algorithms are equally likely to misinterpret them based on the language we use, since we cannot express it through body language.
Christiane Paul’s description of Body and Identity states that “while our physical bodies are still individual, physical ‘objects,’ they have also become increasingly transparent: exact surveillance and identification seem to threaten the idea of individual autonomy.” With my work, I hoped to point out that online, often our interactions are overshadowed by the “mob mentality.” It becomes harder for the individual to be heard in a sea of stronger and louder emotions. The landscape shaped by input mirrors real life, in the way some emotions dominate while others dissolve into the background, echoing the digital struggle for presence and recognition.
All in all, Emotionscapes should prompt the audience to consider how our feelings are not just personal through the internet, but increasingly the subject of data, subject to manipulation and possibly misinterpretation. By blending digital art with an interactive component, I hope that Emotionscapes creates an experience that mirrors the complexities of online engagement, where the constant influx of content impacts not only our immediate mood but also our long-term emotional well-being.
Sources:
Paul, Christiane. Digital Art: Third Edition. 3rd ed., Thames and Hudson, 2015.
Notes on Post-Internet by Jennifer Chan (2014).
Click on "Playing Solo" to start a single-player session.
To test, you can enter three simple emotions in a row, like "sad," "sad," "sad" to see the landscape change. Happy playing!