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The Artist Exposing the Data We Leave Online
With projects like “IMG_0001,” an online compendium of YouTube home videos, Riley Walz is calling attention to the hidden deposits of personal information that power our digital lives.
During high school, Walz hung out on Twitter and connected with a community of programmers, sometimes calling themselves makers or solopreneurs, who together hack bespoke Web sites that provide a particular service for fun or for profit. In 2016, an art collective known as MSCHF began creating provocative spectacles that spread online, including an interactive robot dog mounted with a paintball gun, and enormous red boots, seemingly modelled after the cartoon Astro Boy, which were sold as luxury fashion. Walz’s interventions provoke strong reactions because they call attention to the hidden reservoirs of real-time personal data that power our daily lives in the iPhone era, whether we’re requesting driving directions or Googling a news event or looking for a restaurant recommendation.
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