Gen(Self)

As a millennial, I was among the first generation to grow up fully online and in the digital age. As I entered my teens and early adult years, it continued to grow as a source of news, entertainment, knowledge, and a place community — its impact growing on my life and others over time. While this brought with it countless benefits, exposing my generation to new ideas and creating relationships with people around the world, it has, especially in recent years, become more and more of a detriment to my own and others’ mental health, and impacting our outlook on the future of our species.

Over the past decade the internet has become more policed, more censored, and corporatized in some ways, while at the same time growing exponentially in the amount of hate speech, violent, racist, and misogynistic content offered up on the daily by increasingly sophisticated algorithms.

How has this affected us as a species? Was it, in hindsight, perhaps not the best idea for society to create massive virtual ‘town halls’ where everyone gets to offer their opinions on every aspect of life, and where opinions and ideals are corralled and guided by algorithms, (and in recent years Artificial Intelligence)? These online platforms and constant exposure to hate has fueled divisions in close-knit communities, between cultures and races, and even between families and personal partners. Hate has become extremely profitable for those who trade in it online, a factor known to the companies running these algorithms as they use it to fuel and boost engagement on their platforms.

Moreover, although being the subject of frequent debate, I think a lot about how the increasing amount of time spent indoors and online has removed our connection to the land we live on, to the people who came before us, to our fellow human beings, and our relationship and exposure to the natural world.

So how do all these changes affect one as an artist creating music in these first few decades of the 21st century?

Gen(Self) is a self-portrait. Following in the tradition of many visual artists, this self-portrait examines my personal experiences and reactions to these changes in society brought about by rapid technological change. After being online for two and half decades, I’ve seen the changes occurring in real time, and it has begun to take its toll on me.

As I continue to navigate this online world we now call home, I’ve begun to wonder, are my own past thoughts and images of myself offered over the years on forums and social media platforms really representative of who I am as a person? Are these virtual representations of me actually me? Especially as we move into an uncertain future, with A.I. playing a larger role on the internet, could this digital footprint be used to capture, log, and recreate me in some virtual form? Could this be implemented more widely in the future, with virtual representations of ourselves increasingly interacting and making decisions for us online? And how will this continue to affect the growing tide of hate and intolerance found online?