INSTA-TRAPP
An old proverb states:
“The only thing that is free is cheese in a rat trap.”
This proverb applies perfectly to social media platforms which are presented to the users as free applications. However, they are not free. Users pay with their attention, data, time, views of advertisement, and often actual purchase of products, services or ads. Users also create the content that keeps the social media platforms going and now, the content and data are being used to train AI models.
Though this piece is in the scale of a rat trap, ideally, I would like to make it larger than life. Maybe the size of a human being and make it into a human trap!
Insta-trApp consists of a modified and custom designed rat trap that depicts a user interface of a smart phone home screen with app icons. One of the social media icons being a functional trigger, pressing of which activates the rat trap. The piece explores themes of big data collecting, social polarization, and reality manipulation through algorithmic user trapping. Social media is one of the biggest propagators of misinformation and the main platform for the expansion of commodity as spectacle.
