i’m virtual
sound installation
Imaginarium-exhibition, Ailan Taidegalleria, Helsinki 30.4.-22.5.2016 & Foursome -exhibition (Heini Vanhanen, Tatu Gustafsson, Ida Lehtonen, Joonas Siren) Kutomo, Turku 4.7.-13.7.2014

“I’m Virtual” is a sound installation based on online dating profiles. I’m interested in the ways how people define themselves on these profiles, where you have to be simultaneously funny, interesting and sincere, but within the rigorous interface and limitations of the specific dating site. For the installation, I collected hundreds of sentences that starts with the words “I’m” or “I am” around the world from the popular dating site OkCupid – including one of my own – and ran them through a speech synthesizer with different voice/dialect algorithms. I programmed a generative program, which randomly plays the sentences.

The profile definitions connect to my recent thoughts about virtuality. I feel myself that I am existing simultaneously in two different realms at the same time, the actual one and the virtual one. The act of defining your actual self in the virtual world makes a concrete example of this.