The material presented in this page concerns the online exhibition that resulted from the Digital Residency undertaken in July 2022 with Blitz, Valletta. The work consisted in three parts:
1. An online scrolling interaction.
2. A TikTok account with video sketches relating to the project.
3. A website revealing the tracking of the users’ interaction as drawings.
The page includes screen recordings from the online exhibition along with the published curatorial text and press coverage.
The archived interactive artwork can be found at the following link: https://blitzvalletta.com/matthew-attard-archived/
The introductory curatorial text that was published by Blitz described the following:
MATTHEW ATTARD
HERE’S HOW I DID NOT SEE WHAT YOU WANTED ME TO SEE (2022)
OPEN, BLITZ DIGITAL RESIDENCY PROGRAMME
11 OCTOBER – 13 NOVEMBER, 2022
Blitz is pleased to premiere Matthew Attard’s newly commissioned artwork Here’s how I did not see what you wanted me to see (2022) on Blitz’s platform OPEN. Attard is the second of three artists selected for the Blitz Digital Residency 2022 through a competitive open call judged by Blitz director Alexandra Pace and curator Sara Dolfi Agostini, together with Blitz digital arts mentor Valentina Tanni and artist Oliver Laric.
PUBLIC PROGRAMME
An online conversation between curator Sara Dolfi Agostini, digital arts mentor Valentina Tanni and Blitz digital residency artist Matthew Attard will be held on 25 OCTOBER at 6pm.
Here’s how I did not see what you wanted me to see (2022) is the first interactive artwork by Matthew Attard. Its many layers and trails produce a journey devised by the artist to bring “customer awareness” to users whose traces on social media are sold to governments and international corporations to predict behavior and sell products. Attard specifically targets Tik Tok to explore the way one of the newest and most successful social platforms unpacks and abuses the mechanisms of vision. In the technocratic digital society, Tik Tok holds a special place because it attracts an array of subcultures from all over the world. It is fast growing, and users do not seem to mind that the algorithm openly rules the platform.
Attard’s “artistic sabotage” of Tik Tok is an attempt to steal the technology from the market. To do so, he employs an eye tracker, one of many technologies used today for biometric surveillance to capitalize on our visual attention. Not too many individuals are familiar with it or use it for personal entertainment, yet the eye tracker is still quite widespread in gaming, big data and social media. Attard applies his interest in the eye tracker to rethink drawing in the XXI century as a somehow impure hybridization of human and machine which challenges the notions of authorship and style in art. These ideas have been the bastions of art history for centuries, yet atomization and digitalization have opened up opportunities in every field of human action, and culture is no exception. Besides inspiring new processes, they are also questioning the borders between digital content, a startling visual object, and art itself.
On Blitz Valletta’s website, Attard invites the users to experience a deconstructed exhibition – to see, read, and follow. Each possibility, identified by a button, corresponds to an alternative journey into the artist’s process – even the backstage – as if Attard wanted to leave nothing untold in an “I post therefore I am” world, to update René Descartes’s principle. While the seeing and reading experiences immediately launch on the opening day, the “follow” – a curated feed of eye contents and challenges found by the artist during his Tik Tok safaris – grows over time. Also, another button flashes up during the exhibition, under the name “big data”, referencing the material collected by the artist.
Ultimately, in Here’s how I did not see what you wanted me to see (2022), artist Matthew Attard exposes the invisible power game played at the expense of the user and creates a portal to a new market with art products of tech-culture available to all, and thus of no economic value.
EXHIBITION SCHEDULE
The exhibition takes place online at www.blitzvalletta.com
11 October to 13 November 2022
Here’s How I Did Not See What You Wanted Me To See
October 2022
Screen recording of an interaction that took place on a mobile phone.
The work started with TikTok’s statistic that the average user spends a daily amount of 01:30 hours looking at content on the platform. I spent the same amount with the eye-tracker while trying not to look at the content. The user had to keep scrolling in order to play the resulting footage of my ‘not looking’, an action that ironically mimicked how such platforms are designed to keep us scrolling. Whenever the user would cease to scroll, the footage stopped playing and a statistical window appeared. This also revealed that the scrolling/swiping movements were being interpreted as a drawing.
Here’s How I Did Not See What You Wanted Me To See
October 2022
Screen recording of an interaction that took place on a computer.
The work started with TikTok’s statistic that the average user spends a daily amount of 01:30 hours looking at content on the platform. I spent the same amount with the eye-tracker while trying not to look at the content. The user had to keep scrolling in order to play the resulting footage of my ‘not looking’, an action that ironically mimicked how such platforms are designed to keep us scrolling. Whenever the user would cease to scroll, the footage stopped playing and a statistical window appeared. This also revealed that the scrolling/swiping movements were being interpreted as a drawing.
The full introductory curatorial text that was published by Blitz described the following:
A number of selected video sketches relating to the project were uploaded on a TikTok account. These consisted in the following:
The website that revealed the users’ interaction as drawings was presented as below:
Press coverage for the project included:
Retrieved from: Vella, S., 2022. Visual Artist Targets TikTok In Latest Interactive Artwork at Blitz Valletta, Lovin Malta. October 23.