My year long project, Alias & Artist, delves into the murky waters of art in the age of the internet. Through layered installations, niche subcommunities are brought out from the ether into the corporeal realm. By merging the online with the offline, the complexities of internet etiquette and the alienation of our sociability are reintroduced into our ‘real’ life. Chatrooms, forums, and now social media have slowly replaced third spaces, also known as communal areas, in the real world – all in the interest of commodifying our social relationships.

“If the information is not being sold to you, then it is you who are being sold.” — McKenzie Wark

From uncanny CGI influencers to mystified NFTs, the many arms of data colonisation are laid out on display. My satirical video pieces critique and question how our data is mined, reproduced, and sold back to us. Meanwhile, my 3D modelling engages in the act of appropriating the appropriation – deploying the shifting and otherworldly aesthetics of AI art without using AI to make them. My project has taken many forms throughout the year, using advertising as a vehicle for exhibition as much as installation. By displaying my art through advertising campaigns on YouTube, Instagram, and in Times Square, I’ve been able to exemplify and invert the role of advertising in data colonization.

“More than that, human life, and particularly human social life, is increasingly being constructed so that it generates data from which profit can be extracted.” — Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias

Being part of Gen Z, I’ve grown up witnessing the evolution of the internet and the many digital devices attached to it. As it’s become increasingly more intertwined with our daily lives, I’ve been driven to study and document online cultures, phenomena, and protocol. My practice has always included digital art in some aspect, having started exploring the medium in my early teens. So I ask – what better way to discuss the internet than with the very tools its given us?