Targeted

2020-ongoing. Archival pigment prints, video, sculpture.
Variable dimension.

Since April 2020, I have been tracking, stealing, and studying my targeted ads. Trying to inverting the inherent power dynamics in which my data is sold and weaponized, in which advertisements are forced on me, I choose to pay attention; to click and shape the directions of the ads in strange ways; to capture the content that catches my eye and present it nearly unmodified. I want to imagine my targeted ads as a multi-branched plant: I water it, trim branches, shape its growth, gather its fruit, attend to its changes.

Nearly 3000 targeted ads were collected, studied, and analyzed using Machine learning and statistical processing techniques. The machine’s tools are used to analyze its own algorithmic suggestions, re-categorizing the images and building contextual relationships between them. Within and across these image subsets, I highlight gradients of continuity and salient clusters, presented through prints, video, and sculptural work. These are equally acts of algorithmic appropriation and algorithmic empathy, with one algorithm trying to understand another.

Targeted: Seat. 2022. 31.5"x24". Annotated archival pigment print on canvas, coloured pencils.

In Targeted: Seat, an object detection algorithm is used to identify all advertisements containing objects one can sit on. The subset is then spaced visually to create smooth transitions between visual similarity, functionality, and luxury.

Targeted: Hands. 2022. Transfer on canvas. 18"x18".

In Targeted: Hands, an object detection algorithm is used to identify all advertisements containing hands. The subset is then spaced visually to create smooth transitions between hand gesture types.

Handheld: drifting, drifting. 2022. Single channel video (10:38 mins), prosthetic hand, iPhone, charger.

Handheld (drifting, drifting) documents the process of collecting, growing, analyzing, and organizing a corpus of advertisements between 2020 and 2022 from the perspective of an ambiguous narrator.

In Targeted: Perceived Similarity at 40fps, the entire corpus of advertisements is analyzed based on visual similarity. Each advertisement appears for a brief moment before transitioning to the next similar ad, tracing a path through "similarity space". The image sequence, algorithmically stitched frame by frame at an increasing pace, reveals uncanny transitions, which at the speed of 40fps, begin to perceptually morph into one another.

Targeted: Percieved similarity at 40fps. 2022. Single channel video | 5:42 minutes.

Photos by Guy L'Heureux