alter-egos3570-blog

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Introduction

    Social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram have become these platforms that foster and promote personal expression and self identification amongst its users.  “Social media enables identity expression, exploration, and experimentation; something natural for the human experience.”  In this digitally saturated and technologically savvy society we live in today, people are able to curate their identities online through what they share and post on social media, often documenting certain aspects of their lives and showcasing the parts of their identities they want publicized along the way.  This allows for the creation of these virtual personas to exist on these social platforms, sometimes differing from one’s actual persona in the real and physical world.  One is able to easily choose how they want to represent their identities online, mainly due to the fact that no one knows anything else about the person besides what is shared from them directly through and from their profile.  

     It’s this blurry line between one’s virtual persona and how they choose to portray their digital selves online through posts and likes, and one’s offscreen human persona living in real time.  Scholar Ugur Gunduz, in the Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, examined the effects of social media on identity construction and found that “communicating online offers many ways to connect with others: individuals may or may not use their real names, and they can open as many accounts as they want to.  The probable reasons that individuals feel the need to create a virtual identity for themselves as well as “the spiral of transformation”, that is, the creation period goes ahead of the internet to reach the real life.” Often with this comes many effects and pressures that arise from social media as a result of this strong urge many feel to maintain this public image and carefully curated identity both on and off screen.  Although social media serves as a great platform where people are able to connect, express themselves, and figure out who they are, these sites also create pressures for users to document these digital identities in ways that encapsulate and showcase them looking their best and living their best lives, regardless of whether or not their digital identities lie in extreme contrast to the identities they hold offscreen.  

    This exhibit ‘Alter Egos,’ explores these ideas and notions about social media and identity construction; from the ways these platforms promote immense freedom to self express, to the societal pressures that come with it to uphold a certain image about one’s self, and examines the various types of behavior that we so prominently see in this digital age.  According to Gunduz, “social media platforms have a growing importance in our lives since they are the places where we “showcase” our living experiences. They also reflect a variety of dimensions regarding our position in the virtual and physical social life.  They enable individuals to present themselves to others and determine the way they would like to be perceived in addition to helping them connect and interact with people, and participate in the activities they wish.”

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Amalia Ulman: Excellences & Perfections (2014)

     “In selfies, people perform their identities before one another as cultured, cultural beings.”  LA based artist Amalia Ulman carried out a five month long,  scripted performance in three parts via Instagram to replicate the profile of a “hot Instagram babe” in a attempt to address the ‘narrative conventions’ of personal branding that social media often evokes.   In her project Excellences & Perfections, which has been given the title of the ‘first Instagram masterpiece’ by the London Telegraph, Ulman recreates the type of ‘it girl’ profile that social media highly demands.   Documented through her posts and captions on Instagram, she undergoes an extreme makeover to reinvent herself which consists of her getting plastic surgery, dying her hair platinum blonde, following a strict diet, posting pictures of her body, getting breast implants, and sharing cliche quotes and fashion advice with the 90,000 followers she accumulates throughout her fictitious journey.  Ulman essentially forms this entirely new identity online through the content of her posts on Instagram.  She changes the image of her persona to match the one of a typical celebrity by showcasing these changes in her physical appearance and lifestyle to challenge this idea of people crafting their online images through social media platforms in a attempt to convey them living ‘a good life’ and the fact that platforms like Instagram essentially reduces their users to a brand.  

     Although it was all a facade for the most part, for she didn’t actually get plastic surgery, Ulman was extremely successful at making her point about this self-branding obsession.  She revealed that her motivations were to “point to the distance between women’s success-driven online presentations and the reality of their lives.”  Her online performance in Excellences & Perfections highlights the ways in which people are easily able to craft their online identities through the content they post online, and at times this digital image of themselves that they put forth into the public sphere in a attempt to portray themselves in the best light, may not always be true to the realities of their lives off the screen.  She demonstrates how incredibly easy is is to create this online presence made up of lies and false information.  Ulman said,  “It was my first attempt to work with fiction using social media, to also demonstrate that there is no authenticity online.  We don’t present ourselves through Instagram, we create selves through Instagram, using a series of cultural and material markers of identity.”

https://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/amalia-ulman-excellences-perfections

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Cindy Sherman: Untitled #465 (2007)

     Cindy Sherman’s piece Untitled #465 addresses female stereotypes in pop culture.   In a attempt to recreate the typical ‘perfect party picture’ that is so prominently seen online in this day and age, she displays these overly happy women, (who are all versions of her in edited forms) with red cups in their hands, flashing these huge dramatic smiles.  Sherman says that this piece “was inspired by the idea of party photos seen so often where people, desperate to show off their status and connections, excitedly pose to have they picture taken with larger than life sized smiles and personalities.”  

     She highlights the pressures many people feel to portray their lives in this way via social media to seek validation, acceptance, and praise from others.   The idea that this public display of a perfectly happy social life through these kinds of posted pictures being essential to convince followers that one is leading their best lives is something that is consistently seen in today’s social media crazed society.  What followers do not see is all of the things that are happening below the surface, past the facade of the publicly curated image online.  Although people may look like they have their lives together and are perfectly content upon glancing at posed photos like these that they share on social networking sites, there are so many people who have other issues going on that go way below the surface of their virtual image-and these photos would not be able to showcase it.  This revolves around this pressure for users to hide all of the negatives they are dealing with in order to maintain this ‘worry free’ online persona to convince others that it is true, even though the photos may not be showcasing the realities behind the lives they are living or their true identities.  

https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/cindysherman/gallery/11/#/3/untitled-463-2007-08 

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Mike Campau: Antisocial (2007)

     Mike Campau’s 2007 piece Antisocial comments on the darker aspects of social media platforms.  Using a combination of photography and CGI, Campau portrays these luminescent signs advertising various social media platforms in the middle of eerie, dark parking lot backgrounds.  Campau aims to make a point that although these sites and platforms are supposed to bring society together, it often isolates people off screen and creates antisocial behaviors.  Hence the sign posts in the middle of empty parking lots which he claims are metaphors for “the singularly isolated posts we share on sites like Twitter and apps like Snapchat.”  People often become so obsessed with keeping up with their online lives and focus too much on maintaining these identities that they isolate themselves in the real world.  

     He also highlights the ways in which we use these platforms to keep up with the facade of our online identities.  For example Facebook’s sign says “The place to go to make everyone think your life is great!”  Instagram’s says “Look at me.  Look at me.  Look at me.”  Twitter says, “My political view is all or nothing based on other posts and memes.”  People often feel the pressure to use social media to put forth this ‘perfect life’ image into the public.  Campau highlights the true uses for many of these apps that we use everyday, by visibly portraying their realistic representations and showing how people actually see them.   

     Mike Campau suggests that we post pictures on Instagram in order to attract attention and gain likes from others and that we use Facebook’s album sharing feature and daily status updates to make it publicly known (or at least make it seem) that our lives are fantastic.  This ties to this reoccurring theme in this exhibit showcasing the ways in which people put up this positive front via social media platforms.  People often curate an online image about themselves in the way they want to be seen to others because they feel pressure to maintain this virtual identity or prove to the world that their lives are without flaw, even though it could be the opposite off screen.

http://www.mikecampau.com/antisocial 

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Born Nowhere: Lais Pontes (2015)

     Pontes uses Facebook “as a platform for crowdsourcing identities.”  She digitally modifies her own self portraits to change her facial characteristics, essentially completely transforming her physical appearance to the fullest extent.  She then takes these altered portraits and posts them on facebook so that users are able to share their thoughts and interpretations of the various ‘characters’ to create this “socio cultural experience” through their comments.  People post what they imagine the characters to be like, and perhaps what they imagine their lives are like as well.  Pontes then creates a generalized biography for each of the characters consisting of their traits, ambitions, personalities, and qualities-crowdsourced from the most popular collected facebook comments for each portrait online, firstly showcasing the connectivity and interactivity that goes on that has been made possible through these social networking sites.     

     This piece ‘Born Nowhere’ focuses on the ways people are able to capture their identities through their subjective points of view and translate them online through something as simple as a self portrait or profile picture.  Users on social media who view other profiles of people often automatically formulate these ideas and stereotyped opinions in their heads about what these other users online are like, even if it’s just their physical appearances that are showing.  People generally like to take what a person looks like and associate traits and qualities to them that parallel these physical characteristics that they are seeing on screen.  This project explored these new popular forms of social behavior in the digital age that we live in as well as this “shifting framework of identification.”  Pontes essentially created an entire cast made up of these distinct virtual identities, and gave them life through the sourcing of comments from participatory users via Facebook.  

http://www.laispontes.com/born-nowhere/installation/

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Virtual Mask: Lais Pontes (2015)

     ‘Virtual Mask’ by Lais Pontes is a continuation from her social media based piece ‘Born Nowhere,’ in which she crafts these virtual identities for each of the characters she creates from her digitally altered self portraits through crowdsourced facebook comments.  In this project, she takes the characters she created in Born Nowhere and places these white QR codes linked to online profiles over these self portraits, as “protectors of the private, hidden identities individuals create using social media platforms.”  

     Pontes highlights the accurate way people feel the need to hide their true selves, or alter their real identities behind the facade of their virtual self representations online.  People are often confident in fronting their online profiles that have been carefully crafted by them and put up on display to be intentionally publicized.  However, this causes social media users to essentially hide the parts of their lives and selves they don’t like-the realistic and gritty parts, in exchange for this digital representation of them through their profiles, which although in their eyes may be ‘who they are’, is often highly inaccurate.

http://www.laispontes.com/virtual-mask/Stacy-Virtual-Mask/

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Jeremiah Teipen: Social Network (2009)

     On the contrary to Campau’s beliefs about the antisocial effects from social media, new-media artist Jeremiah Teipen showcases the ways these platforms can bring users together through what they curate the web with.  Teipen portrays this idea and the ’gluttony of the web’ in a colorfully noisy video featuring flying cash, dancing monkeys, bright rotating 3D words, rapidly changing images, and random clips from youtube videos, moving across a black screen that was gathered from Google Image searches. 

     In this chaotic and wildly expressive piece titled Social Network, Teipen highlights the workings of social networking sites and what people do on them.  He says, “That’s very much what people do with social networking sites.  People are curating the Web with quotes from someone, with song lyrics they like, video they found, a photo they thought was funny. It expresses identity through found media.” People are not only able to curate their identities through the pictures of themselves they post on their profiles, but also in the ways they publicly interact with these social media platforms in what they are reposting, uploading, and commenting on.  He explores the ways in which people can foster their identities online by ‘curating the web’ and these platforms with content that they have some sort of tie or connection to.  These videos, pictures, and clips that they put on their pages resonate in some way to their own personal self. Viewers are able to learn about about who other users are and what they are into from what types of things they are reposting and sharing to the public sphere, essentially acquiring knowledge about their identities through their publicized interests.

http://jeremiah.teipen.com/socialnetwork.html

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Rina Dweck: Project Face (2013)

     Artist Rina Dweck changed her profile picture on Facebook every single day as a way of self expression.  Often our identities are the product of the images we curate online and the photos we choose to embody our own selves.  Dweck seems to transform her entire identity to encapsulate a variety of personas simply by altering her profile picture.  On one day she is a mysterious mime like woman behind bars, and another day she is a blue painted woman on the beach with glitter on her face.  She raises questions about social media such as how people interact with it and use it to their advantage. 

      Rita also highlights the ways one is able to foster a personality and sense of identity to the eyes of people viewing her profile simply by a profile picture change.  A profile picture on facebook is usually seen as the one single image that you are choosing to say, ‘this is me,’ for you are essentially choosing the best image to capture who you are.  She showcases the interchangeable ways we can craft our virtual identities through what we select to showcase to others on social media, and how easily it is to reinvent/transform yourself to fit into a different mold and immediately appear in another way via these platforms. 

http://rinadweck.com/projectface.html 

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Ryder Ripps: Ho (2015)

         In his series ‘Ho’, Ryder Ripps takes the instagram photos of famously known model Adrienne Ho, digitally distorts them using photoshop and the warp/liquifying tool, and then transfers them to an oil painting.  He says he chose Adrienne because “her instagram account embodies the idea that we can curate our personas and create a fake realism for other people to make a constant reflexive feedback loop of ego.”  Her profile is one that is filled with brand names, as she gets paid by Nike and Supreme to post pictures of herself.  He highlights identity in the digital ‘selfie’ age that we are living in, and this staged reality and forced realism that many social media users are subject to.  This often leads to a ‘distorted vision’ about what is most important in life.  

     For Adrienne Ho, how she chooses to represent herself on these social media platforms is largely based on these brands she is promoting.  She bends her own identity to fit their molds in order to encompass the image of the brand that is paying her to post these pictures.  It’s this blurred line between one’s real life identity and one’s online persona, and in the age of the internet, these online personas are becoming more of our realities than who we actually are in real life.  He says “ but we’ve all turned ourselves into images. We’ve chosen how to mediate our own realities—this isn’t true only for her, this is true for almost everyone. Life now is a constant reflexive feedback loop of ego. You’re constantly being confronted with the reflection with yourself in a way that you weren’t before. Especially if you’re someone who’s notable online, your reality is your online presence.”

http://ryder-ripps.com/ho/ 

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Bibliography


Works

1. “Amalia Ulman: Excellences & Perfections.” Amalia Ulman: Excellences & Perfections :: New Museum. Accessed April 30, 2018. https://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/amalia-ulman-excellences-perfections.

2. MoMA | Cindy Sherman | Gallery 11. Accessed April 30, 2018. https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/cindysherman/gallery/11/#/3/untitled-463-2007-08.

3. “ANTISOCIAL.” Mike Campau: Digital Artist - Combining Photography and CGI. Accessed April 30, 2018. http://www.mikecampau.com/antisocial.

4. Jeremiah Teipen. Accessed April 30, 2018. http://jeremiah.teipen.com/socialnetwork.html.

5. PROJECT FACE. Accessed April 30, 2018. http://rinadweck.com/projectface.html.

6. “Ho, 2014.” Ryder Ripps - Ho - 2014. Accessed April 30, 2018. http://ryder-ripps.com/ho/.

7. System, Neon Sky Creative Media. “INSTALLATION.” INSTALLATION: BORN NOWHERE: Laís Pontes. Accessed April 30, 2018. http://www.laispontes.com/born-nowhere/installation/.

8. System, Neon Sky Creative Media. “VIRTUAL MASK.” Stacy-Virtual-Mask: VIRTUAL MASK: Laís Pontes. Accessed April 30, 2018. http://www.laispontes.com/virtual-mask/Stacy-Virtual-Mask/. 0

Scholarly Sources

1. Gündüz, Uğur. “The Effect of Social Media on Identity Construction.” Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences 8, no. 5 (2017). doi:10.1515/mjss-2017-0026.

2. Kozinets, Robert, Ulrike Gretzel, and Anja Dinhopl. “Self in Art/Self As Art: Museum Selfies As Identity Work.” Frontiers in Psychology 8 (2017). doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00731.

3. Amedie, Jacob, “ The Impact of Social Media on Society” (2015). Advanced Writing: Pop Culture Intersections. 2. h p://scholarcommons.scu.edu/engl_176/2

4. Ellison NB, Steinfeld C, Lampe C (2007) The benefits of Facebook friends: Social capital and college students’ use of online social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12(4): 1143–1168.

5. Hoadley CM, Xu H, Lee JJ, (2010) Privacy as information access and illusory control: The case of the Facebook news feed privacy outcry. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 9(1): 50 -60.