Utopia Machine
Prithi Khalique
We are heavily dependent now in 2020 on the web and digital communication. While we have the freedom to access infinite amounts of content, our personal data is collected and used to benefit capitalist institutions. Multi million dollar corporations, financial markets and military strategists use our data to evade social regulation and establish political control. We are outsourcing our future to private companies using biased data sets that are exclusionary to female data. They are highly excluded from medical devices, healthcare, transportation systems and technology. There is a huge gender difference in access to and control over these electronic networks. Female data is only harvested when it comes to the categories of beauty marketing, online dating, and making the perfect AI.
The Utopia machine is a speculative technology that helps us disengage from money, nationalism, domination and systematic violence. This project mocks the commercial role of the data/service product where it allows you to envision a new electronic system of data collection with the cyber identities of real life females. The cyber identities and worlds are constructed through computer mediated communication where you have user input and access to all your data. Virtual worlds and elements are generated according to the personal data, statements and imagination of the person that is being scanned. How do we make the impossible possible with our existing technology? The purpose of this is to be able to incorporate our virtual experiences in real life behavior and policies, and to suggest that new use of technology could overcome the binary of traditional dominant ideologies.