THE BOOST PROJECT
ANT HAMLYN (United Kingdom)
What's the perfect ego? What role does social media play?
The ability to edit, manipulate and choreograph our digital lives is at the tip of our fingers. We do it without realising. We craft our perfect lives. The Boost Project is a interactive, living installation exploring how social media can allow us to live within an alternate reality; one in which we can easily attain a heightened sense of belonging or a temporal state of appreciation. The inflating orb aims to emulate the acceptance and self-worth we can feel after receiving ‘likes’ on our posts or pictures online in a playful way. The Boost Project triggers a series of algorithms to search online for live interactions on its own social media pages.
Each time The Boost Project is followed on Twitter (@BoostSGM), receives a like on its Facebook page, hits on its website or is hash-tagged #THEBOOSTPROJECT, it begins to gradually increase in size, swelling slowly until it reaches its peak. If no interactions are found it begins to subtly deflate and fade into the background of our lives. While social media addiction has been linked to narcissism, what are the positives of a digital social life?
www.theboostproject.biz
Ant Hamlyn completed MA Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art in 2017. His works attempt to flirt between the live and the Live, the performer and the performed and the glamorized and the real. Ant has exhibited work at the V&A, Zabludowicz Collection, FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, QUAD, CCI Fabrika and in 2017 represented the UK at 18th Mediterranean and European Biennale (BJCEM, Meditteranea18) in Tirana, Albania.