Social⧵Network Observation Academy

Network Real-Time Video, Digital Print

Dimensions Variable

2021

Through our bodies, we gain an understanding and establish connections with society, space, history, and nature. However, as the advent of the post-Internet era, under the circumstances that the virtual world infinitely approaches reality, do our virtual five senses become a physical part of our body? Can our virtual identities and the name on our household registration transcripts still be considered a rigid dichotomy?

Social / Network Observation Academy reproduces HONG Yi-Null’s participation in the Taiwanese Internet incident–Salmon Chaos in the form of an archive. From social media, news reports, to real-life society, the incident spanned many virtual and physical platforms: a large number of fake ID photos went viral on the Internet, with people claiming to have changed their names. This phenomenon gains wide discussions and even was reported by the Washington Post. They afterwards confess their fraud a month later and accept comments from the media and the public. The archive reproduces these performative behaviors and public reactions, arguing how the human body is no longer one entity, but a state of divergence that is spread out in virtual world and reality. Information cannot be easily judged whether it’s right or not. Instead of sticking in a vague, unobservable, uncertain state, the Internet is no longer an inanimate carrier medium for information, art, and content, but an assembled organic life that can think and deliver on its own.