Secrets From a Girl
by Maya Man
July 1 - July 10, 2022
Secrets From a Girl presents a collection of Maya Man’s generative, browser based work focusing on identity, femininity, and the internet. The exhibition highlights social media’s role in encouraging the curation and cultivation of an aspirational self. Working primarily with custom software, Man comments on internet culture by algorithmically remixing and collaging it into her own websites as art objects. The pieces “FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT” and “Read it and Weep” both appropriate text fragments found on social media, directing viewers’ attention toward the circulation of language within online platforms. Other works insert the image of the artist herself, always augmented or manipulated by digital filters and tools. Transforming the gallery into a space reminiscent of her old bedroom, Man employs DIY aesthetics to develop an aura of intimacy and vulnerability. The bedroom acts as a “backstage” to where reality is performed. There, one spends time alone: scrolling, consuming, praying that someone on their small screen can tell them how to “be themselves” the right way. With Secrets From a Girl, Man holds up a mirror to both ourselves and our social media feeds, revealing the inextricable link between what we believe and what we consume.
この度SOOTでは、Maya Manによる個展Secrets From a Girlを開催いたします。 本展覧会では、アイデンティティ、女性らしさ、インターネットに焦点を当てた、ジェネレーティブ、ブラウザベースで制作されたMaya Man作品のコレクションを紹介致します。 この展覧会では、憧れの自己をキュレーションし、育てるというソーシャルメディアの役割に焦点を当てています。作家が構築したカスタムソフトのアルゴリズムを使用し、インターネットカルチャーをリミックス、コラージュした自身のウェブサイトをフィジカルなオブジェとして表出させています。 『FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT』『Read it and Weep』は、ソーシャルメディア上にあるテキストの断片を使用し、オンラインプラットフォームにおける言語の流通に鑑賞者の注意を向けさせることを意図しています。その他の作品では、常にデジタルフィルターやツールによって補強・操作された作家自身の画像が使用されています。 誰もが幼い頃に自分の部屋をデコレーションした時のような手法を展示に用いることで、ギャラリーを彼女が過ごしたベッドルームを思わせる空間へ変化させ、親密さと脆弱性のある雰囲気を作り出しています。 ベッドルームは、現実を演じるための「舞台裏」のような役割を果たします。 そこでは一人で過ごし、スクロールし、消費し、小さな画面の中で誰かが「自分らしく」ある方法を教えてくれることを願うのです。 『Secrets From a Girl』で、Manは現実世界とソーシャルメディア上の私たちを映し出し、信じるものと消費するものの間にある表裏一体の関係を明らかにします。
Custom generative software (color, silent), projection on canvas, web browser, mac
JavaScript (p5.js), HTML, CSS
This generative piece algorithmically remixes words and phrases sourced from existing Instagram posts to scrutinize the promotion of wellness, self-care, and confidence on social media. Installed as code running live in an internet browser, the program generates a graphic in real time before projecting it onto the canvas on the back wall. It is highly unlikely any image that you see will ever be generated in the exact same way again. Select output has been printed on canvas and displayed in a grid at the front of the gallery.
The piece concentrates on the rhetoric employed in these types of Instagram posts. Persuasive, upbeat, and relentlessly inspirational, there’s a sense of authority embedded in each one. By collaging language that already circulates on Instagram, the program generates word combinations that mimic real posts’ cheerful tone, but range from feeling vaguely familiar to totally absurd.
Wrapping these phrases in the sugar cookie aesthetics of girl power media, the piece imitates the graphics designed to catch your eye as you’re scrolling through your feed. Randomized visual variables include the output’s background style, color palette, text size, and text layout, as well as other decorative elements such as stars, hearts, flowers, and sparkles.
As language scholar Amanda Montell writes in her book Cultish: “Quotegrams–with their comely fonts and generic syntax–serve as a form of loaded language themselves, designed to yank on user’s heartstrings, to get them to like and repost without much thought.” These media objects survive on likes, comments, and shares. What do I believe? becomes What do I want to appear to believe? Algorithms are convinced that your ideal lifestyle lives here: In a dreamy, digital world, where self love can be secured in a screenshot.
Custom generative software (color, silent), projection on canvas, web browser, mac
JavaScript, HTML, CSS
Glance Back is a browser extension that acts as a daily photo diary, capturing the moments shared between you and your computer. Once a day, when you open a new tab, Glance Back will unexpectedly take your photo, ask you what you’re thinking about, and save both the photo and written thought to its locally stored archive.
It's an ongoing interactive piece and performance, currently being enacted by 9,073 people (at the time of writing this) who have the extension installed on their computer and use it every day.
Usually, it happens once a day at random, but this custom version running on the laptop on the vanity allows gallery visitors to experience what it feels like to have their computer Glance Back at them.
The monitor to the left of the vanity features a reel of photos taken by my Glance Back since I developed and began using it in 2018.
To install the extension, visit glanceback.info.
Maya Man
love/hate, 2022
Edition 7
Punching bag, chains, ribbon, video
Duration: 5 minutes 17 seconds(NFT)
Certificate(NFT)
Weight: 15.4 kg (34 lbs)
Height: 80 cm (31.4 in)
Diameter: 31.75 cm (12.5 in)
Custom generative software (color, silent), display screen, web browser, mac
JavaScript, HTML, CSS
This infinitely performed text examines the relationship between interiority and exteriority in an era where our practice of consuming and producing online relentlessly influences our sense of self.
It features excerpts from articles, books, essays, personal journals over a span of 10+ years, as well as text fragments (I call them "internet trash" lol) observed and collected throughout my time spent scrolling.
Running live in an internet browser, the work layers these snippets to mimic our habit of overwriting our identities on screen again and again and again.
Visit the work on your phone/computer at readitandweep.live.
