Facebook and Transmediale - your face is ours

These days, social networks have become a natural part of our society, changing our perception of communication and identity extremely fast. At the Transmediale.11, with Facebook as its focus topic, the artists met the possibilities and challenges of social networks. 

Six years ago, the first version of Facebook went online as part of the Harvard University’s network - today, the site has 600 million users worldwide. The company has just announced that currently 15 million users in Germany have their own Facebook profile.

Looking at the role of digital networks when it comes to democracy movements in Iran, or currently in Egypt, even the biggest sceptic should be convinced about their global political and social dimension by now.
 

Online identities and social structures

But Facebook has also considerable downsides: the danger of abuse of power, be it in the area of data protection or be it regarding manipulation attempts, is immanent – there is a lot of discussion about it.

At the Transmediale, the artists Heath Bunting, Tobias Leingruber, Ursula Endlicher, and Christin Lahr have a critical look on Facebook, raising questions regarding our online identity, our motivation, and a changing social structure. Allen Gunn deliberately doesn’t provide real data to social networks. Kristoffer Gansing, the future artistic director of the Transmediale, deliberately has no Facebook profile at all.
Media critic Alessandro Ludovico has approximately 800 friends on Facebook. For him, it is crucial how much you can control your data in the future – his art project Face to Facebook is based on 1 million stolen Facebook profiles… Let's have a party!