Yesterday I went and saw the ‘Decode‘ exhibition at the V&A Museum, London, as well as ‘Identity‘ at the Wellcome Collection. Although both exhibitions were different, I started to think about how they offered an insight into the way we now display and create information about ourselves and others. With all the British television stations discussing the changes in technology and in particular the growth of social networking and communication over the last decade, it seemed like an appropriate end of the year to write down a few thoughts about what I had seen.

‘Decode’ links together artworks that deal with ‘code’, ‘interactivity’ and/or ‘networks’. From generative pieces created in flash and custom software such as Lia‘s ‘Arcs 21′ and John Maeda‘s ‘Nature’ to interactive pieces such as Simon Hiejins ‘Tree’ and ‘Lightweeds’ to a mixture of the two such as ‘Videogrid’ by Ross Phillips, the exhibition displayed a range of digital artwork based on code and/or user-generated pieces. It was these works, that integrated the user into their design that interested me in relation to the next exhibition ‘Identity’ at the Wellcome Collection. Ross Phillips’ ‘Videogrid’, Daniel Rozin‘s ‘Weave Mirror’, and Fabrica’s ‘Venetian Mirror’, all allow for the viewer to become temporarily integrated in the work. ‘Videogrid’ in particular allows the viewer(s) to capture themselves in a three second movie, that is then played on one of 25 small screens within the piece, until someone else comes along and erases in to place their own new image sequence.

In contrast to this, the ‘Identity’ exhibition was about the curating of 9 peoples ‘identities’ within 8 separate rooms. The issue of identity was discussed in different scenarios, from people changing their gender, to keeping diaries and logging thoughts and memories, through to the use of fingerprinting and DNA. Each room was filled with objects, notes, photographs, and press clippings relating to their work and lives, solidifying this idea of ‘identity’ and its various meanings. Each object such as diaries and photographs were unedited and offered a glimpse into the person’s life at a particular moment. This contrasted to the temporal nature of the interactive works I had previously viewed in ‘Decode’. Although the audience of the exhibition could leave their mark in certain pieces, these were time constrained and faded away slowly over minutes, hours or in some rare cases possibly days. Were these people’s identities also being captured even though there was no remnants of their existence a short time later?

Social networking in particular, such as blogging, twitter, facebook, etc allow for people to construct different identities for various purposes, be it work, socially or somewhere in between. We can now delete or untag photos, digitally edit online diaries, create new websites and delete or forget about old ones. It is now possible to constantly update and edit our lives through what we do or don’t want people to see or read, not only to a wider audience, but also on a more local level through the use of PIN numbers and passwords only known to ourselves. This is part of the world we can now live in and choose to use if we so wish, which made me wonder about what would an exhibition like ‘Identity’ look like in about 50 years from now? Would there be screengrabs of blogs, airbrushed photographs, lines of old twitter feeds, encrypted data not possible to find? How will this data be displayed and will it hold the same meaning?

The point of this entry wasn’t to question the morality of social media, but to question as to how this may be displayed in future work. How will our lives journeys be documented in years to come? This issue of how ‘identity’ and how it may be portrayed in a different light through technology is one that is no doubt continuing to be answered, but I think it may be more interesting to see how we will then document this in say 2060. Not only is the way we create data ever-changing but the objects/software, etc associated with how we create that data are also changing and I think it is this documentation, how it has evolved and may possibly be curated that may prove to be even more interesting in years to come. Happy New Year everyone!