L'Internet est Subjectif
An initial studio project while at Parson's Paris lead me to be curious about the differences between the internet from an American Perspective vs a French perspective. Having been in France for a month and witnessed particularities with French youth, the daily news, the internet, slang, etc. I was curious about a French internet "subculture" that I could possibly tap into. (Think "Black twitter" but en Français).
Of course, I was naive in thinking I could tap into this internet world in which I had virtually no connections (pun intended). So, I began to think about my own relationship to the internet and my various social media outlets and decided to screenshot the information I came across on my own, with the intention of going back and researching for what I believed to be the French equivalent. For a 2 week project, I had to narrow down to what I thought was worth showing, the endless web was NOT going to be at my disposal in such a short time frame.
And so, I thought of the incredible subjectivity of the internet. I thought about the way my online identity is made up of all the information I come across on the platforms I've already chosen to follow and the way one associates themselves with the ideas and entertainment outlets they already believe in. I found some texts that spoke about this very idea: Social Media and Self: Influences on the Formation of Identity and Understanding of Self through Social Networking Sites by Madison Ganda in Portland State University.
My final project is a translation of this research into a tangible object to concentrate my research and take the digital out of the screen. Collaged onto an old French newspaper, my screenshots from several American and French online sites including Buzzfeed, Brain Magazine, Spotify, Twitter, etc. and feature images of the presidents, the top trending musicians, the top trending films, and memes from both countries, among other random things.
