To Be Reproduced

To Be Reproduced is an interactive video installation that revisits the classic painting ‘Not to be Reproduced’, a work made in 1937 by the Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte. The installation reflects on the pervasiveness of virtual spaces that have become an integral part of our daily social lives, and the way data traces are used to build sophisticated reproductions of the user. In To Be Reproduced the viewer enters a hybrid space where the physical and the virtual world are closely intertwined. Positioned in front of the mirroring plane the viewer is enveloped in a virtual space where it meets a faceless digital reproduction of itself. As other participants are mirrored correctly the viewer takes on the role of the person depicted in Magritte’s painting. This uncanny representation of the faceless user in a graphical point cloud refers to the voyeuristic nature of modern communication culture and to the data traces that are used to generate sophisticated consumer profiles. Instead of depicting people by mimicking nature, models are informed by analyzing metadata.