Constructing the Psychographic

Room Installation, Dimensions Variable
Collaboration with photographer Chris Ireland

Constructing the Psychographic presents the nature of the digital footprints we share so freely on the internet, and questions the validity of constructing identity through the individual profiles created. 

In 2014, Cambridge Analytica obtained information from over 250,000 Facebook users. Focusing on the Facebook “likes” recorded by those users and their friends, Cambridge Analytica utilized this data and information to help influence the outcome of the presidential election. The artists decided to collaborate and build a psychographic from each of their digital footprints—questioning how accurate was the psychographic.

This collaboration represents the physical manifestation of data retrieved and collected over 7 days from the artists’ Facebook feeds. The data mined is presented as wallpaper, creating a physical space made of virtual information. The artists utilized a psychographic survey application developed by the University of Cambridge designed to predict personality traits through Facebook content and ran their own Facebook pages and feeds to gain “insight” into their own personalities. Throughout the installation a recording of Zuckerburg testifying in front of Congress regarding the mining of Facebook data plays on a TV screen. This footage was recorded the day before the installation opened.