Jonas Lund: Critical Mass
Curated by Aude Launay
École Municipale des Beaux-Arts/Galerie Édouard-Manet
October 12—December 9, 2017
Opening on Wednesday, October 11, 6 to 9 pm
Public guided tour with Jonas Lund and Aude Launay on Saturday, October 14 at 2.30 pm
Just as we can’t see through somebody else’s eyes, the web that is presented to us is never absolutely identical to the one presented to somebody else. Algorithms organize what we see every day on our newsfeeds, “decide” how long this content remains visible and to whom it is shown. For them, we are a set of data. No more no less. However, their technology is constantly evolving and we are now far from the simple “if you like this, then you will like that” to which we tend to reduce the recommendation process. Indeed, these recommendations do not only operate at the level of the content but are mainly carried out according to their recipient. For example, the Instagram Explore function (its image recommendation system) is surprisingly not based on an analysis of the images themselves but only on that of the metadata related to the user of an account.
On its side, Facebook claims “to show all the posts people want to see in the order they want to read them”.1 e disclosure at the beginning of last June2 of patents led by the company in 2014 and 2015 to detect the emotions of its users and adapt to them in response sums up well the applications of this technology which now spreads like wild re: to exploit the emotions of users to target the best time to present them with commercial content.
O -line as well as on the web, the most advanced techniques of facial detection are put to the service of the classi cation and the quanti cation of the items that we are of the permanent market study in which we live. We are demographic-emotional pro les.
“Critical Mass” explores the idea of an emotionally targeted curating—as one would speak of a marketing target, as Facebook speaks of massive emotional contagion—and its cumulative e ect. e perpetual optimization of the content in an ever increasing precision, applied to the work of art: this is the experience o ered by this rst solo show in France of the Swedish artist Jonas Lund. Based on a “visitor experience”, which makes this latter an essential element of its structure, the exhibition is built on the evaluation made by those who visit it, physically and virtually. Here,
Jonas Lund transforms the gallery into a speculative space awaiting reactions through user-friendly connected paintings and a website which he designed as a feedback and remote control system.
If the key to its success lies in the satisfaction of its viewer, will “Critical Mass” actually boast of pleasing everyone?
Outsourcing the curatorial choices that constitute it, the exhibition seems to let its audience take control of what is presented to them, unless it turns them into a legion of emotional turks?3
To nd out, give your opinion a voice and challenge the other users by submitting proposals for what you think should happen in the exhibition space. Take part in the critical mass.
Aude Launay