Fluid Identities

A face interface and a design initiative

*This project was exhibited*

See Details

*This project was exhibited*

See Details

*This project was exhibited*

See Details

Project Type

MFA Thesis; Multimedia Art

Role

Creator & Designer

Timeline

Sep 2021 - Feb 2022

Overview

FLUID IDENTITIES is a design intervention that manifests in the form of a DIY Fluid Mask and a public initiative. Together, this work invites people to engage with the mask as a mass-produced symbol and a site for individualized customization and performance.

This initiative interrogates the centralization and interconnectedness of surveillance capitalism as well as contemporary identity overload, all the while recognizing fluidity to be a presumed agentic human condition and a widely-acceptable social factor.

Check out my thesis video for all details.

The Fluid Mask -
A Face Interface

A Face + 1 Window + 2 Displays Makes a Statement.
Make it at Home and Make it Yours.

As the main artifact, the Fluid Mask is a physical interactive face interface that contains 1 window and 2 displays to give people agency altering between representations of identities.

A Face + 1 Window + 2 Displays Makes a Statement.
Make it at Home and Make it Yours.

As the main artifact, the Fluid Mask is a physical interactive face interface that contains 1 window and 2 displays to give people agency altering between representations of identities.

A Face + 1 Window + 2 Displays Makes a Statement.
Make it at Home and Make it Yours.

As the main artifact, the Fluid Mask is a physical interactive face interface that contains 1 window and 2 displays to give people agency altering between representations of identities.

Scenarios

Fragmented yet Authentic, Incomplete but Sufficient.
Opacity means no need to resolve towards the whole.

Directly confronting society’s entry points, it first looks at identity's context-specific fluid legibility that reduces the whole set of personal identification data into the partial and only presents these parts as necessary and sufficient within themselves.

Apart from that, it also mediates the larger ontological concept of fluidity as a vessel into daily interactions by isolating out the respective “identity signals”, using self-expressions to confront the utilitarian sense of identification.

Fragmented yet Authentic, Incomplete but Sufficient.
Opacity means no need to resolve towards the whole.

The Result

FLUID IDENTITIES has been featured in two exhibitions, accompanied by the essay "Biometrics, Dualities, and Fluid Identities: A Decentralized Response to the Modern Normalization of Biopower" published in Berghahn Journals.

See below for details.