The danger of big data, the data collection on the Internet, in which algorithms coldly calculate not only consumption preferences, but also the most private and intimate details, was the starting point of an experiment: The artist group Laocoon wanted to find out whether it was possible “simply by analyzing the data , which Google has collected about a human being to create a double of flesh and blood in the form of a performer “. A volunteer was found via a call to provide the artists with their complete dataset from previous years. They analyzed and interpreted – and finally wrote a script that was rehearsed by an actress.
Sounds spectacular? The results are quite impressive. Laocoon was able to trace the biography of the test person relatively precisely, knew about their place of residence, occupation and biographical incidents and set about, for example, recreating the London house in which the young woman lived for a while for the stage of the PACT Zollverein in Essen of the betting office on the ground floor. In the end, not only was the facility in place – the fact that private crises such as an eating disorder or an unwanted pregnancy emerged in the course of the search engines was a result that was quite disturbing for the test person.
Dramaturgically, the young woman’s shock appears as rehearsed as an evening TV show
Which is not really understandable in the television documentation for the project. Dramaturgically, the shock and horror of the young woman appear as rehearsed on the split screen as in a previous evening television show. In addition, the creators mixed interview fragments into the program, which are supposed to classify and comment on the experiment – but unfortunately all of them were filmed in the Starbucks workspace aesthetics of a brick building. Theorists such as the American professor Sandra Mantz provide knowledgeable information about the social dangers of big data, but they actually only report the by no means new theses, according to which a few clicks are enough for Facebook, Google or Amazon to assess our personality at least as well like closest friends and family.
How similar will the experiment participant and her doppelganger be?
(Photo: WDR / Konrad Waldmann)
Yes, all of this is explosive – but still finds Made to Measure Hardly anywhere on a form that, as a narrative, contains special perspectives or dense, touching moments. Even shocking moments – like the revelation of the eating disorder – seem staged. All the effort that is shown here shows that the artist group has indeed carefully studied the style, for example the interlinking of performance, virtual effects and experiment, with more famous artists such as Omer Fast or the Forensic Architecture collective. But where they manage to develop complex political or historical events as valid narrative, Laocoon only whispers – and chatters the so unconvincing “experiment”, which basically consists of the interpretation of all the data of a randomly selected person, simply more and more Footnotes, chapters and effects.
Made to Measure – a digital search for traces, WDR, on September 1st. 10:15 p.m.