How does it feel to be a fiction? Athens Virus is a digital performance that disseminates a text using software. This software acts similarly to a “viral email worm,” eliciting the active consent of participants. A version of this test was used by the consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to gather the data of approximately 87 million Facebook users. The Athens Virus spreads through the newsletter of AB6, collecting data presented in the space of AB6 coupled with an eye-tracking system that profiles the personalities of the visitors. Once the online visitor consents, an email is sent to all the email addresses stored in his / her Gmail account. Continuing with the How does it feel to be a fiction series of projects, Shvarts interrogates the kind of complacency produced in digital space by examining ourselves as products of fiction.

#virus #personaldata #consent #digitalspace #internetculture

photos: Nysos Vasilopoulos, 6th Athens Biennale 2018 ANTI