Vicinity Point [Sound Installation]

Vicinity Point is a sonic equivalent of heavily pixelated/blurred images of familiar places in Dnipro [Original field recordings for the locations are available here: rb.gy/4zfqaf]; it serves as a metaphor for distorted perception of the external stimuli or to what extent it would be possible to retrieve relevant pattern when given the partial/manipulated information. The installation is also a physical manifestation of received information being dependent on where we stand in relation to the source.

'One of the subtler tasks of perception can be investigated experimentally by asking how much information is required for recognition and what information is the most important'
- Leon D. Harmon

Obfuscated algorithmic machine of Facebook eliminates information from the users' infosphere it deems irrelevant based on data users stream into the black-box, diverting attention exclusively towards subjects guaranteeing to keep them entangled in the platform as long as possible, hence constantly reaffirming their worldviews.

Recurring ideological agendas render them more accessible to humans in process of retrieving applicable concepts from memory for interpreting or forming judgments about encountered piece of information. Besides, on the battlefield of attention economy and infoxication it takes even more effort to funnel one's cognitive resources into rigorously researching issues pouring on news feeds.

'Just as the consumer economy was boundless in its power to commodify, so the attention economy is boundless in its power to render reality standing reserve for the project of identity construction/performance. The two processes, of course, are not unrelated. In the attention economy, strategic silence is power. But, because of the above, it is also a deeply demanding practice of self-denial. Virtue is self-forgetting. The structures of social media make it impossible to forget yourself.'
- Michael Sacasas

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www.civicmedialab.eu/2017/#artists8
Photo: Vlad Lemm

Civic Media Lab is supported by the Federal Foreign Office, and cooperatively organized by Kultura Medialna Dnipro & DS-X.org | depart.