It is interesting if we transpose people’s actions from online social platforms to the social space in reality. People express themselves on social media as they are performing various kinds of monologues. The performance seems to face the chaotic and boundless cyberspace, yet they seem to have a target audience of their own.
Relating to our own experience in digital space, we found a unique property of online social platforms which distinguishes them from the social space in reality. We named this property Public Privacy. In the platform, Weibo, which our discussion main based, the public contents users post are accessible to everyone theoretically. But in fact, only a few acquaintances who usually interact with the publisher will actually receive that information, disregarding the special cases.
It is this feature that gives Weibo users a subtle sense of “peeping” while viewing content posted by other users who they do not regularly interact with; and when their posts are being read, they will also get a sense of “being peeped”, mixing a complex set of psychological activities such as “wanting to be read by someone” but “not some others”, etc.
At the time, we believed that users who are engaged in online social platforms (such as Weibo) were all aware of this feature, whether consciously or subconsciously. Under this awareness, keeping using these platforms is tantamount to agreeing to a contract, that one’s public posted content can be peeped by anyone, and one has the right to peep anyone’s open content. This is also the origin of our project name, Voluntary Peeping Contract.
The production process started with the selection of the content.
Initially, we preferred writing a program to automatically crawl content from the web, in order to present a simple mimicry of the Weibo environment the most objectively. However, during the discussion, we realized manually selecting creates another layer of voyeurism, which is able to make the whole project more multifaceted. Finally, we gave ourselves a chance to “peep in the open”.
We randomly selected content from Weibo and add them to our library. This process involves a great deal of prying at acquaintances – but more so at total strangers, and a large amount of unpredictable flowing discussion about all aspects related to this:
After a short period of excitement, we find that voyeurism is not as exciting as we initially expected, and after different accounts, there are repetitive faces in the same key – we gradually get numb. What kind of object – from its relation with the voyeur to the content itself – would provoke voyeurism?
In digital space, the image of each individual is shaped only by the content that one posts, and is, therefore, harder to be perceived comprehensively. Then once this user starts to post content more than “flat,” how the “flatness of dimensionality” caused by the differences between content will affect the viewer’s perception of that image – from superficial life to spiritual world?
Does our selection of content affect our objectivity about the way the overall structure is presented – since the latter should be ideally about the form?
Ring-shaped Screens & the Cell Phone Screen The installation contained 8 screens in total. We decided to design the overall environment as a circular space, partially inspired by the concept of Panopticon by Bentham. We hope when our audience is at the center of the installation, they can simultaneously feel the power of watching others and the discomfort of being watched. 7 identical screens play the prerecorded Weibo monologues under the command of the central processor, based on our written logic and audience input. At the center there is a cell phone, its screen will show in real-time the original Weibo post of the latest monologue played according to the audience’s voice input. We believe it will be a surprise when our audience realizes how close and reality-related all these go.
Host Computer & Monitor Splitter The eight screens need to alternate between different yet related content, thus we used two hosts, one to generate the live audio received by the microphone, the jumping to the original Weibo posts by link on the cell phone screen, and three monitor screens, the four monitor screens left handled by another host. The two hosts are also connected, the former commands the video played by the latter. We used two splitters to transmit the video signals generated on the host computer to the final screen separately. When a new audio signal is no longer received, the video being played will be cut off after five loops, and the screen will stay at the last frame. Therefore in silence, the installation presents seven static faces surrounding a standing microphone.
Microphone & Speakers As the main interactive part of the installation, the microphone is used to receive the audience’s voice, while also playing a role of instruction, to cue the audience to make some speak to it. When the received audio signal reaches a certain decibel, the voice recognition system will transcribe the received content into text, which will then be compared with the text content of all monologue scenes in the database and finally present the most matching one. With this feature, we refer to the Echo Chamber Effect of social media. The matched audio tracks are played through four speakers placed between the corresponding screens. We hope to create a more immersive rebuilt of the “square-like” digital social space by providing a stereoscopic, authentic sound experience as the audience walks through the installation.
We have been trying to create a sense of multiple voyeurisms in our work process and the final product, consciously documenting from the very beginning. We documented the unhindered internet peeping start from ourselves, documented the performers curiously dipping their toes in those Weibo original authors’ lives and mentalities, documented the viewers peeping those small fragments of life that conveyed by the original authors and performers together, and at the same time, we invite the audience watching the documentary to peep at us who are peeping.
As an interactive installation, it is not very clear what each part of the exhibition is for. The audience need to follow text instructions to experience the viewing process as the creators’ expectations. For example. The microphone is placed together with the cell phone, which seems to guide the audience to read aloud the content on the phone, thus deviating from artists’ initial expectations. Although this opens up more possibilities for exploration and interpretation, but is also likely to leave the audience uninformed and disinterested. In response, we conceived of adding a voice-activated lighting system, and using distance sensors to adjust the audio volume relatively, and hope we can make improvements if we have opportunities in the future.
Through this project, we hope to reflect on some features of the online social space, and how people’s behavior varies in different social realms. However, the continuous discussion with the volunteer performers during the production process, the adjustment of the production process due to the real situations, and the personal experience of the final product brought us a lot of deeper thoughts and made us reveal the meaning of this work beyond our expectation.
When the installation finally stood in front of us, we were in this space with a pure white background, speaking into the microphone, watching the seven screens around us gradually light up, and the cacophony of people’s words and gestures with all kinds of emotions, our voice was relatively weakened. For the first time, we were immersively in a simulated, three-dimension reconstruction of the digital social platform.
The structure, “square”, came up.
In a real-world context, this scenario is also a good illustration of the “public privacy” of cyberspace. In a square, everyone can talk, but generally, your words will only be heard by a small circle of people around you. It is exactly because of the “publicness” that everyone’s words are accessible, which made people tend to have a sense of “privacy,” that they do not think their words will be heard by the majority of the crowds other than those around them. This is the privacy part of “public privacy.” However, anyone can walk up to you to hear your expression. Meanwhile, when a person’s words attract the interest or attention of a large group of people for various reasons, people will gather around them to hear their words, and what they posts will be greatly publicized due to the publicity of “public privacy” of the square.
But unlike the real square scenario, the “public privacy” of digital social platforms does not exist only for the content that happens in real-time; the memetic nature of the Internet makes it so that when a user is exposed to the public, all of their past posts remain on the platform are converted from private to public at the same time – even if they has done nothing with them.
Thus, by joining the Internet Square, users are not only agreeing to the Voluntary Peeping Contract, but they are also aware of even they posted content with a sense of privacy, at some point in the future, that privacy may not exist anymore. This is another contract, and it is also the rule of the “square of the Internet.”
Throughout the four-month production of the Voluntary Peeping Contract project, events related to the topic we were exploring occurred from time to time, creating a subtle reflection of our discussions. At the same time, when the installation was finally exhibited, our communication with the audiences also made us realize the limitations of our original observation. Our reflections on Weibo space can only represent a part of user’s perceptions of the digital social space, and for real situations, when everyone joins the digital platform and participates in the square, it is possible for them to be aware of the “public privacy” and “rules of the square,” but it is also possible that they hold a very different preconception of this space which is different from but highly relevant to the reality. Some people use Weibo as a place to comment and discuss public concerns; some believe that the unspoken contract reached by users when deciding to use Weibo is, following each other means willing to listen to each other’s grievances, and thus an unfollowing means a break in the agreement; some use Weibo as their business card, and that following others is showing interest in getting along; some treat social platforms with different levels of publicity such as Weibo, Moments and Qzone with the same attitude and perception; some people shared with us a more detailed communication platform than Weibo targeting at sensitive and delicate Internet users; and there are many people who do not use Weibo at all…
And according to the feedback of the final exhibition, the audiences with different habits and cultural backgrounds have various interpretations. Some related to the spectacle of the mass community by Guy Debord, thinking the monologues with monitors visually translate the lives and self-expression of Weibo users into spectacle visions, revealing the production and consumption patterns of social media in which users spectacularize themselves while viewing the spectacular visions of others, this may be one reason of the blurry of privacy and boundary; some were curious to see more of the monologues; some were more interested in the way the whole mechanism received sounds and gave feedback; some thought the circular space created a multi-faceted, simultaneous theater, while some others felt that the gaze from the videos in the screens and the presence of the microphone brought the audience a strong sense of being peeped; the faces on the screen reminded some audience of the Chinese sense of “face”, and during the pandemic, when video meetings are widely used, how does a facial image instead of a three-dimensional body constrains or frees people’s socialization…
Made by
晁乐成 何昱颖 章德音
Alan Ingrid Mia
教授 Professors：
Prof. Wu-Wei Chen
Prof. Eric Parren
Prof. Weixian Pan
Prof. Stavros Didakis
组织和机构 Departments and Institutions：
IMA Equipment Room
NYU Shanghai IT
NYU Shanghai Student Gallery
NYU Shanghai Dean’s Undergraduate Research Funding
演员 Actors：
曹奕尔
曹开玺
晁乐成
范嘉茵
李睿豪
李肆
李央
李一则
刘其霖
刘梓岩
陆青蓝
莫维凡
倪可扬
童雨菲
王美璇
闻悦圆
闫子琪
杨艳
章德音
张玥嘉
SERGII SERPENINOV