Benjamin Grosser

Go Rando, 2017

‘What’s on your mind?’ asks Facebook’s casual invitation to post something new. Actually Facebook gains insight into the ‘mind’ or thoughts of each individual reader thanks to nuanced profiles that advertisers use in turn as the basis for targeted ads. But given its total of two billion subscribers, Facebook also has good insight into the collective ‘mind’ of users, which amounts to a gigantic, dynamic body of data just waiting to be mined. Benjamin Grosser has already realised several projects relating to Facebook. For instance, his ‘Textbook’ allows one to use Facebook wholly without visual content, his ‘Facebook Demetricator’ gets rid of all kinds of statistics, for example, on ‘likes’. And his new project Go Rando is a response to the relatively new option of being able to react to another user’s post with an emoticon rather than a simple ‘like’. Emoticons allow us more nuanced communication. In return the Facebook company acquires more sophisticated data: quantifiable emotions. Grosser encourages us to provide less easily evaluated data. If we install Go Rando, the emotive responses ranging from love to rage are assigned at random. Over time our emotional profiles flatten out, tendencies become less predictable. (Yet exceptions are possible; for instance, you can avoid posting a weeping emoticon when your best friend gives birth.) Ultimately it’s a matter of the extent to which we allow our emotions and our minds to be commodified.

Artwork: https://bengrosser.com/project...
Artist: https://bengrosser.com