About the Virtual Interaction:

Self-Portrait version 2.0 (SPv2) was an online application that explored how identity can be constructed and perceived through data collection in cyberspace. Some data in cyberspace we consciously create to represent ourselves (emails and web sites, for instance). Other bits of data accumulate without our efforts--and many times without our knowledge--tracing certain of our interactions both in the physical and virtual worlds. Because of this data we do not willingly disperse, our cyber image is not always in our control nor ever fully knowable to us. SPv2 illustrated to what extent we are accessible online and what we may look like through mining Internet data.

About the Physical Installation:

SPv2, was installed in a blue imaging booth at Carnegie Mellon University's Miller Art Gallery in Pittsburgh in 2002.

Inside the imaging booth, SPv2 appeared on a flat screen monitor. With a track pad, a viewer interacted with SPv2 and created Brooke Singer's portrait by turning on/off the different, available data streams. When the viewer was satisfied with the constructed image, he/she pushed a button to save it.

When the button was pushed, a hidden camera inside the booth took a snapshot of the viewer (see images above). Both the on-screen image that the viewer saved and the secret snapshot were projected together in the upstairs gallery for the public to see.

Status:

SPv2 is no longer available online. It lived on the web from Oct. 2001 - Oct. 2003.

SPv2 was exhibited at SIGGRAPH '02. See documentation of it here.

Also, read about SPv2 in Ricardo Miranda Zuniga's essay, The Work of Artists in a Databased Society: net.art as on-line activism. This essay was published in the May 2002 issue of AfterImage.