Facebook Mosaic is a platform I developed to allow people to create art using their social data. My current work is highly focused around capturing and visualizing social data to provide utility to the masses. We upload an extensive amount of data to our social networking sites every day, however we, for the most part, can only view that data in the prescriptive context of our virtual social networks i.e. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. My goal is to find ways to capture this data and visualize it in ways that can actually improve our day-to-day lives.
Although Facebook mosaic may not achieve that goal, the development process was crucial to my understanding of what it takes to query various social networks and make use of the information returned. It also gave me a chance to use my creative side to develop something fun and interactive. You can use Facebook Mosaic to generate images with you social data by visiting the website.
Here is a statement I wrote for the piece:
As an Electronic Artist I am always looking for ways to re-contextualize the role technology plays in our lives. Facebook Mosaic is a program that takes three profile pictures from a user’s Facebook news feed, and blends them together dynamically using one color channel from each photo.
Many of us use Facebook daily to communicate and share with friends and family, locally, and around the world. This forum has become a global “water cooler,” with a reach not bound by time or space. As a result, we are forced to think about our interactions in an entirely different way.
Although there is a distinct level of separation between our “real” selves and our profile, Facebook provides a melting pot for our ideas and identities to blend together like a large mosaic with many facets coming together to create a dynamic collaborative whole. My goal with this piece is to frame this abstract concept in a concise, playful fashion so as to depict our social interactions as works of art.
