Graduate Studies

Interdisciplinary Master's in Art, Media and Design (MA, MDes and MFA)

Alex Perlin

A Minute of Digital All At Onceness

Marshall McLuhan describes a new era of “allatonceness”, where “‘time’ has ceased, ‘space’ has vanished." (McLuhan and Fiore 63). This concept is used in this sculptural installation to present our experience online, through a data visualization of the volume of content released into the digital space within a single minute. As defence experts P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking point out in their book, Like War: The Weaponization of Social Media: "In a minute, Facebook sees the creation of 500000 new comments, 293000 new statuses, and 450000 new photos; YouTube the uploading of more than 400 hours of video; and Twitter the posting of more than 300000 tweets. And behind this lies billions more dots of added data and metadata, such as the friend tagging who appeared in that Facebook photo or the system of marking what cellphone tower the message was transmitted through." (Singer and Brooking 58)The sculpture divides the data in a 10:1 ratio and uses laser cut icons to display viral news headings, expressions and events in graphic form. For example, graphic icons incapsulate phrases that Donald Trump introduced to the cultural vernacular during the 2016 election, including “grab her by the pussy” and “lock her up”; a flattened globe represents Flat Earth conspiracies. Canadian headlines are captured in a mask with Justin Trudeau’s phrase “speaking moistly”, while the Liberal Party’s ethical scandals are represented in graphics depicting the controversy with WE Charity and SNC-Lavalin. The concept of overlay and “allatonceness” are further emphasized by the selection of news stories that are incorporated as icons in the work. These are stories that span across several years, but that remain online and reemerge through acts of sharing and retweeting. In this way, the sculpture captures the multitude of moments that exist within a single moment of sharing or posting, drawing the audience’s attention to the vast, inimitable character of online communication. The suspended sculpture hangs over rows of wooden school desks, that are incorporated to signal the relationship between the digital space and traditional forms of education. The work resembles a cloud of content that looms over the classroom. There is a deliberate visual tension between the materials, as well as the orderly rows of desks and the chaotic, reflective sculpture. That visual tension is meant to signal the very real tension that exists between learned and lived experience, as students engage with curriculum that does not adequately prepare them as digital citizens (Howe; Breakstone et al. 3). The chaotic appearance makes the sculptural work difficult to decipher at a distance, echoing how students are underprepared to decipher the information that they encounter online (Breakstone et al.). In these ways, this sparkling, digital canopy speaks to the vastness and complexity of the issues surrounding civic engagement, digital technology and media literacy that are ordinarily imperceptible, but that in this case, physically cannot be ignored.Works Cited:Breakstone, J. et al. “Students’ Civic Online Reasoning: A National Portrait.”. Stanford History Education Group & Gibson Consulting, 2019, https://purl.stanford.edu/gf151tb4868. Accessed 20 Oct. 2020. McLuhan, Marshall and Quentin Fiore. The Medium is the Massage: And Inventory of Effects. Penguin Books, 1967.Singer, P.W. and Emerson T. Brooking. Like War: The Weaponization of Social Media. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2018.__*Due to restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 Pandemic, the planned exhibition for this work could not take place. The project is presented as a series of prototypes.

“Marshall McLuhan describes a new era of “allatonceness”, where “‘time’ has ceased, ‘space’ has vanished." (McLuhan and Fiore 63). This concept is used in this sculptural installation to present our experience online, through a data visualization of the volume of content released into the digital space within a single minute. The sculpture divides the data in a ten to one ratio and uses laser cut icons to display viral news headings, expressions and events in graphic form. The suspended sculpture hangs over rows of wooden school desks, that are incorporated to signal the relationship between the digital space and traditional forms of education. The work resembles a cloud of content that looms over the classroom. In these ways, this sparkling, digital canopy speaks to the vastness and complexity of the issues surrounding civic engagement, digital technology and media literacy that are ordinarily imperceptible, but that in this case, physically cannot be ignored.”