Distributed Empire

BACKGROUND: Rapid international growth in social networks has identified the need to investigate the relationship between self-identity and the power of global internet corporations repsonsible for such networks. "Selfies" uploaded to social networks represent a complex relationship between self-identity and exploitative cultural labour. CONTRIBUTION: Distributed Empire, presented online via public contribution and on large public screens in Sydney and Darwin, recognises the significance of global social networks while investigating the underlying technical structures that serve to monetarily profit the owners of the network rather than its contributers. The original contribution to knowledge represented by this work is the creation of original artworks generated by a collaboration between human contributers of 'selfies' and the underlying algorithms behind global search and social network engines that explicitly expose the workings of global digital networks. SIGNIFICANCE: Significance is attested to by the work being commissioned by ISEA2013, among the most significant international exhibitions of electronic art, and supported by the Australia Council for the Arts through the Broadband Arts Initiative, and Arts NT. The work was reviewed in RealTime magazine and Desktop magazine.