Inhabiting the Invisible

Since the mid 2010s social networking companies like Facebook and search engines like Google have implemented AI tools to improve and expand the capabilities of their ubiquitous
platforms. This represents an important shift in our relationships to these technologies and poses questions for how we define our future interconnections (personal, social, political) with the digital realm. Inhabiting the Invisible is an interactive and immersive media installation that takes an aesthetic approach to defining our relationship with this realm - can we perceive these changes in both a visual and understanding sense? Have these changes informed how the platforms perceive us?

Although the installation does not seek to provide any single answer to these questions, the intention is to provoke a response in the mind of the participant. The immersive, interactive experience, using the very AI tools used by the platforms, invites and even perhaps coerces us to join with it, and look into the digital realm.

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After 35 years of making and managing scientific software projects, Paul Van Rijn finds himself among many creative and positive people in the Digital Futures program at OCADU. It is an energizing and humbling experience.