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Entertainment

Discovering Similarities In A Differential Universe

An interactive installation that creates social galaxies.

The vast frontier of the World Wide Web opens windows to the unfamiliar that would otherwise be entirely inaccessible. Consequentially, such exposure into the unknown turns us all into mouse-clicking tourists, embarking one click at a time to uncharted web pages and strange domains. Essentially, we are all lone travelers in an endless cyber sojourn. In this digital day and age where everyone is fingertip deep in various cyberspace cliques, it’s easy to be lonesome whilst “socializing.” Korean graphic designer Hyojin An and media artist Hyuns Hong galvanize this digital (anti) social predicament in their interactive motion graphic installation Everything Rolled Into One.

In essence, this project is a digital universe based on registered similarities between users. Kind of like Tesoc Ha's smartphone app Integral City, it records participant’s preferences and renders an adjusted, unique “place” within a projected molecular universe. As more people input information, the larger the universe grows. Even more, as questions are similarly answered, floating clusters of places expand—creating stronger and larger social pools. These galaxies of similarities, although very simple in execution, uncover an easy way to negotiate the divergent consequences of digital socialization.