public tracks — Social Networks and Virtual Identity

The here presented project, comprising a photographic series and an audio/visual animation on the topic of virtual identities in social networks, was created for the proposal call for Mutations III, as part of European Month of Photography 2010/2011.

The following overview briefly outlines the concept of the project:

The facebook profile of Eric Themel, a 33-year old Austrian and professional snowboarder, was selected from the innumerable and constantly increasing users in social networks.

A fan of Peter Fox, Käsespätzle and Pirate Movie Production, Eric Themel’s personal interests are motorcycles, racing cars, dogs, photography, mountains and nature.

He has currently 1,423 friends in his facebook-profile.

In a first step Eric‘s network of acquaintances was explored and their interactions reproduced in the form of a graphic, grid diagram. In the next step, this constructed network was superimposed as a mask over photos selected from Eric‘s facebook profile. The result is an entirely new image, which is only mapped in the image areas where the network is visible. By further layering several photos, new image contents emerge within the network structure. The size of the network consequently also determines the size of the picture.

The following five slides provide the experimental formation of 22 of the profile-owner‘s 1,423 friends.