Logging into Identity
Between the social media and the user, intimate stories of connection and rejection are made. And while digital platforms are still labelled as services, they have been rendered far more than that in our everyday life.
“Logging Into Identity” takes from user experience analysis and methodology to present to you, whether you are a user, a developer, or a policy maker, the emotional backend of an individual experience or relationship with zeros and ones.
Logging Into Identity is the culmination of several conversations Anya, Swaeny Nina, and Omar have had around some of their shared interests and concerns regarding our presence in the virtual sphere and the intrinsic relationship we have as individuals or users with some of the existing online services and spaces that also function as an extension of our social sphere.
The project is composed of a collection of scripted monologues that playfully but intimately attempt to trace their relationships with some of these internet services, which range between email providers, social networks, and microblogging platforms.
Our approach in this project allows closer proximity between our emotional presence in the virtual space and the larger context of policy-making, digital agency, and data and privacy concerns.
Using such a format, we attempt to bring attention to the often neglected emotional toll or entanglement of being present, with or without our consent.
Omar Adel (Berlin, Germany)
Omar Adel is a multidisciplinary artist and cultural practitioner working across video, sound, photography, design, coding and performative instances. Their artistic practice draws from a subjective point of view of their realities, where they see its moments of manifestation as a series of attempts rather than moments of resolution. These attempts usually look into the complex entanglement and moments of intersection between technology, constructed environments and human cognition, three paradigms that the artist regards as the fundamental keys to understanding modern and contemporary societies. Observing this entanglement enables Adel to construct, rethink and question the complexity behind them. More
Swaeny Nina Kersaan (Den Bosch, the Netherlands)
Swaeny Nina Kersaan is an artist and researcher whose practice involves creative consultancy on digital culture, surveillance technologies, avatar creation and other modes of online self-representation. In participatory projects, performances, essays and digital artworks, Kersaan demonstrates that contending with increasingly powerful computational control is critical to ensuring agency over our digital identities. After studying graphic design in Rotterdam, Kersaan graduated from ArtEZ University of the Arts (Arnhem) and obtained her Art and Visual Culture MA at the University of Westminster (London). More
Anya Shchetvina (Berlin, Germany)
Anya is a researcher of digital technologies as a part of Culture. She received her education at the Higher School of Economics (BA in Cultural Studies) and the University of Maastricht (MSc in Cultures of Art, Science and Technology). Anya conducts research both within and outside of academia, exploring interdisciplinarity and artistic research to interrogate what it means to have knowledge of digital technologies. More
Below, you can find a list of popular social media platforms and internet tools and their alternatives. With this list, you can make an informed choice about what media you use and how you shape your online identity.
| (Micro)blogs | Twitter, Hubzilla, Mastodon, Tumblr, Gettr, MeetMe, micro.blog, Gab, Gettr, Parler, Plurk, Solaborate, Tout, Twister, Koo, Weibo, Facebook, Friendica, Blogger, Tagged, Trump’s Truth Social, Weebly, Wix, WordPress, [No longer active] Google+, ImaHima, Gadu-Gadu’s Blip, WriteFreely, Are.na (Tumblr meets Wikipedia) |
| Photo sharing | Flickr, Photobucket, Pixelfed, Instagram |
| Social network sites | Facebook, Myspace, Steemit, Vero, Friendica, Hubzilla, Ello, BeReal, [No longer active] Houseparty, Amigos |
| Messaging | WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, Viber, imo, WeChat, Slack, Matrix / Element, Wickr, Status, Signal, RocketChat, Secretum, Conversations, FireChat (discontinued since 2018) Linphone, Briar |
| Mail servers | Mail.ru, Gmail, Protonmail, Hotmail, GMX Mail, Mail.com, Zoho Mail, Mailfence, Tutanota, Mailbox.org, Runbox, Countermail, Kolabnow, Startmail, Soverin |
| Video sharing | YouTube, Vimeo, PeerTube, DTube, DLive |
| Forum | Pixelfed, 4chan, Reddit, Lemmy |
| Organisations/company chat services | Mattermost, Slack, Zulip, Microsoft Teams, Facebook |
| Video-conferencing tools | BigBlueButton (BBB), Jitsi Meet, Zoom, Skype, Google Meet, VMix |
| Virtual worlds | Second Life, Neopets, imvu, Decentraland, Roboblox, MozillaHub |
| Audience engagement applications & Online forms | Slido, Poll Everywhere, Mentimeter, Padlet, Miro, Jotform, Lime Survey |
| Whiteboard applications | Pdlet, Etherpad, Miro, Mural, Weje, WBO, Google Jamboard, Whiteboard Fox, Witeboard, AWW App, Ziteboard, NoteBookCast, Ryeboard |
| Browsers | FireFox, Chrome, Explorer, Safari, Beaker, Oprah, Edge |
| Audio sharing | Funkwhale, Soundcloud, Spotify |
| Cloud Storage | FileCoin, WeTransfer, Google Drive, Dropbox |
About Online Identity
A key theme which came up during discussions between CODE 2022 participants, was the issue of online identity in relation to the use of social media platforms. The design of various platforms stimulates very different types of behaving oneself online. The way we frame ourselves online, and interact with others, is shaped by the options these platforms give us. Logging Into Identity was developed within CODE 2022 to address the various different types of emotional attachment users can have to their platforms.