Skype Me
installation, videos, images, logs
2009
'Skype Me' is an emperical research study about human behaviour within the 'protected' environment of the Internet. For this experiment we have created fake Skype accounts for the ficticious characters of Sonja and Silke, two nineteen year old girls, who love to hang out online much as seeing each other in real-life. They came along the so called 'Skype Me' mode which puts a user into chat availability for anyone else.Both girls were baffled when they experienced what this 'Skype Me' mode really was about. Everybody wanted to fuck them.
Unbeknowst of the outcome, we started to capture any images, videos and chat logs of our conversations. When for the first time the cam opened and a stranger started to wank his dick, we felt really upleasant and shy about the fact of seeing a person showing off. You might say: that's only neutral when enter/intrude someone's privacy respectivly intimacy. This is so so true and we expected it to be like that and we soon stopped bothering and our paranoia faded into oblivion.
"This work is striking; naive, awkward but profoundly true", Georg Bertsch stated, "it's an art work that tells the story of how communiction on the Internet is changing gender. It's a gender study in Live format."
'Skype Me' has been awarded and classified as 'Restricted to 18 and over' by the jury for the annual exhibtion of the School of Art and Design Kassel.
Download a compilation of the chat protocols (158 p.)
Die Intim Protokolle von Sonja & Silke (German Edition) [Kindle Edition]
Article in the national German newspaper F.A.Z. (german)
asquare.org | network research
