If/Else
Pysyvä osoite
Verkkojulkaisu
Tiivistelmä
Binary Disc explores the intersection of social media, anonymity, and the archival impulse in a digital age oversaturated with information. The artistic component of this thesis consists of a web-based artwork and an interactive installation for engaging with the web-based artwork. The interactive installation was exhibited as part of Kuvan Kevät 2025 at the Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki. Binary Disc is Conceived as both an artwork and a critical experiment, in the form of a new social media platform that invites and encourages people to upload a single piece of content, after which they permanently lose access to both their contribution and the platform itself.
At its core, the project employs a binary code system: each participant receives a code ending in either 1 or 0. a structural reference to the most fundamental logic by which machines process and categorize us. By enforcing the one-upload-only rule, Binary Disc interrupts the endlessness of digital feeds and accumulation, instead imposing scarcity, finality, and disappearance as conditions of interaction. Within this system lies a further layer of unpredictability: the Red Horse. Printed only once during the exhibition. This ticket grants its holder extraordinary power to alter, or even delete, the entire archive. This mechanism functions as a stress test of anonymity and authority,
The written thesis component, If/else, traces Binary Disc from its initial conception to its full realization, situating the project within broader theoretical, artistic, and cultural contexts. It examines the technical execution process, the conceptual framework and staging questions of permanence, randomness, and authorship while engaging with theories of deindividuation, and digital memory. By drawing on philosophical, psychological, and literary references from Lynch and Sunstein to Zimbardo and Golding the work situates itself as both a critique and an embodiment of our networked condition.
In this thesis written component, Binary Disc is situated at the intersection of Interactive Art, New media and Internet-based Art. The written component concludes with an analysis of what I expected from the project, and what I have observed and encountered so far.
At its core, Binary Disc is not only a digital archive of people’s memories or interactions, but also a mirror or even a pause, reflecting how humans navigate identity, control, and disappearance within the infrastructures that shape our collective digital existence. Also, as more than an artistic concept for me, it’s an experiment. a formal system altering social interaction by changing the rules of online identity and content sharing.