Who Am I? Clay Art Center

Organised by Clay Art Center, Who Am I? Youth Symposium explored how young people negotiate questions of identity through creative practice.

This symposium used art-making and discussion as tools for self-reflection, allowing participants to express personal, cultural, and social identities in ways that words alone could not fully capture. Rather than seeking fixed answers to "who am I", the symposium emphasised identity as something fluid, shaped by experience, environment, and interaction.

Research Relevance

This symposium is particularly in contrast to my pillar on datafication. While the symposium treats identity as an open-ended, expressive, and self-determined work, my project examines how algorithmic systems does the opposite by reducing lived experience into measurable, comparable data points.

The contrast strengthens my critical position, where creative practice embraces ambuguity and personal meaning. The data-driven systems prioritise legibility, prediction, and categorisation. This reference can help frame my project as a critique of how contemporary systems overwrite fluid identity with system-defined representations.

Reflection

What stood out to me is how identity was approached as something exploratory rather than fixed. Instead of asking participants to define who they are, the experience allowed them to discover aspects of themselves through making and reflection. This reinforced my belief that identity is better understood as something that unfolds over time, shaped by interaction and context rather than a single declaration.

I was also drawn to how the emphasis was placed on process rather than outcome. Participants were not pressured to arrive at a clear answer, but were instead encouraged to sit with ambiguity. This directly informs how I want audiences to experience my work, not as a system that tells them who they are, but as one that makes them aware of how systems attempt to define them.

Most importantly, the symposium highlighted the power of art as a space for questioning rather than categorising. In contrast to data-driven systems that reduce identity into measurable data points, I want my work to create moments of reflection where participants can recognise the gap between their lived experience and how a system interprets it. This reference helps clarify my intention to design experiences that are open-ended, unsettling, and reflective, rather than conclusive or prescriptive.

Experiment 8 Ideation

In my dissertation, datafication is defined as the process through which human actions, expressions, and experiences are translated into quantifiable data that can be stored, analysed, and acted upon. This transformation reduces complex, subjective human states into discrete data points, forming what Haggerty and Ericson describe as the data double, a partial and operational version of the self that circulates within computational systems

The FROM WORD → NUMBER → LABEL experiment materialises this process at its most fundamental level. Participants begin with natural language, selecting a short statement that reflects an internal state or identity. This input represents the richness and ambiguity of human self-expression. Once submitted, the system immediately converts this statement into a numerical value, followed by a fixed categorical label. This sequence mirrors the logic of datafication: meaning is not preserved, but translated into formats that are legible to machines.

Crucially, this experiment does not attempt to replicate real algorithmic systems; instead, it physically stages the act of reduction itself, making visible how complex human expression is simplified into data. The numerical output functions as a stand-in for quantifiable signals such as engagement scores, probabilities, or confidence values commonly used in algorithmic systems. The resulting label demonstrates how identity becomes actionable only after it has been simplified into data.

By separating human language and data output across two physical displays, the experiment makes visible the conceptual gap between lived experience and its datafied representation. In doing so, it foregrounds the first step of algorithmic identity formation: the moment when the self becomes measurable, sortable, and classifiable.

Consult Feedback

➀ WORLD → NUMBER → LABEL

Andreas pointed out that the framing should shift from WORD to WORLD. This correction clarified that the focus is not on language or textual input, but on how elements of the physical world such as actions, behaviours, and lived experiences are captured, quantified, and translated into data. Framing this process as from WORLD better reflects how algorithmic systems abstract reality itself, reducing complex, embodied experiences into numerical representations that are later used to categorise and label identity.

➁ Illustrative → Narrative

Physical Prototype 1 is currently too overly illustrative and it lacks a meaningful relationship between input and output. The numbers used for the output exist, but they do not mean anything to the user. Users cannot tell why the number appears, they cannot link their action to the system's response, and there is no narrative hook.

Andreas referenced this point back to Xander Chin's work, explaining how it wasn't about his visuals, but because there is a causal loop that is immediately legible: gesture → motion → recognition.

The takeaway is datafication must be experienced as a translation, not a randomisation. The core idea is how our human actions are captured as data, reduced into computable form, and used to make decisions about the user. Hence, the prototype must show what is captured, how it is reduced, what is lost, or distorted in the process.

➂ Theory into Impact

Up to this point, I finally reached the point in the project where I began to struggle with translating abstract concepts into a physical outcome that makes a clear point. This difficulty surfaced the core challenge of the work: extracting an argument from theory and expressing it through material form. Through discussion, we reframed the problem by starting with the exhibition concept, rather than the object itself, using a before-and-after framework to examine how interaction might shift participants' perspectives.

By comparing participants' attitudes toward AI before and after encountering with the work, the exhibition becomes a site for observing change, rather than simply displaying artefacts. This approach positions design as an active agent, one that not only visualises issues, but has the potential to shape awareness, provoke reflection, and produce measurable shifts in understanding.

➃ Dissertation / Discussion

As I moved forward with the dissertation, I questioned whether the exhibition proposal should be included within it. Through discussion, Andreas clarified that the discussion section should function as a structured progression, rather than a static reflection. It begines with Semester 1 experiments, followed by a reflective transtion from experimentation to prototyping, before moving into Semester 2's prototyping.

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From there, the discussion should open up to questions of presentation: where and how the work is encountered, leading into exhibition design considerations such as format, influences, and relevant case studies, and ultimately and exhibition proposal. This may be supported by small-scale test setups, such as informal openings, or open studio sessions to gather feedback. Crucially, all sections of the dissertation such as literature review, research objectives, methods, and applications, must remain aligned with this structure, allowing ideas to be consistently linked across the writing.

cookie time... 🍪

As I was voicing my anxieties to Andreas (somewhere between reflection and full-blown whining), he responded by drawing a small illustration of himself peering into a cave through a tiny hole. The cave, he explained, represented the body of work and research I had accumulated so far. It is dense, expansive, and full of works. While it is reassuring to have "a lot", his point was that from the outside, very little of it was actually visible or legible. I need to be able to make my works legible and understandable to the participants or viewers.

Building Algorithmic Identity

Datafication

After several rounds of feedback and experimentation, I deliberately took a step back from form-making and technical execution to refocus on the core idea of datafication itself. Rather than asking what the interface should look like, I returned to the fundamental question of what actually happens when lived experience is translated into measurable data points. This shift allowed me to strip away unnecessary complexity and concentrate on the relationship between input, system interpretation, and output, ensuring that each experiment was grounded in a clear conceptual purpose rather than surface-level interaction.

Experiment 8: Identity Contagion

In this experiment, I explored how identity is progressively formed within a system through accumulated keyboard interactions. It focuses on how repeated micro-actions such as key press can contribute incrementally to how a system constructs and recognises a user. with every interaction, the identity becomes increasingly visible, reinforcing the idea that systems do not need complete narratives to define a person, only sufficient behavioural signals.

Visually, the identity manifests as a spreading, almost disease-like form across the human silhouette. This was an intentional move to make the growth appear organic, yet unsettling to suggest how datafication operates quietly and persistently, often without the user's awareness. What begins as isolated interactions gradually accumulates into a dominant presence, mirroring how everyday behaviours are continuously captured and compounded into a coherent system identity.

By framing the visualisation as something that spreads rather than appears instantly, the experiment critiques how identity under data-driven systems is not chosen, but gradually imposed through participation itself.

Read more about the algorithmic process breakdown in Experiment 8's Catalogue of Making.

Try Experiment 8 Catalogue of Making (Experiment 8)

I began with a fixed human silhouette image, and using image trace, it is composed by ASCII characters. This sets a baseline trace of the subject that never changes. Instead of altering the image itself, I wanted the system to record all user interactions as permanent overlays that accumulate over time.

I set the rule where each committed word becomes a data event that is incrementally thickening, enlarging, or distorting clusters of characters within the silhouette. The system only records data when it is submitted using the space or enter button. Rotation is triggered by pressing a single key "E".

The interaction is intentionally static and irreversible: nothing changes unless the user acts, and once recorded, actions cannot be undone. Typing becomes a proxy for behavioural data, where longer inputs generate stronger system responses. Randomised placement of effects highlights the opacity of how data is processed.

Over time, the identity becomes increasingly marked and system-defined. It becomes more recognisable to the human eye. This tensions mirrors how data-driven systems turn our everyday interactions into lasting computational traces.

Visual Archive

Challenges Faced

In the earlier version of this experiment, my main challenge was the system's behaviour which felt too arbitrary and aesthetic-led. The portrat was generated by detecting "white areas" in the image mask, then stamping random ASCII characters onto those regions. While it produced a visually satisfying effect, the logiv became too surface-level. The system wasn't clearly translating the idea of datafication. The stamping was randomised and it was heavily dependent on threshold settings so the outcome was hard to "sell" beyond the visual.

I also struggled with control and clarity. Small parameter changes (threshold, strength, character size, spacing) could dramatically alter the image which made the portrait too dark, too sparse, or inconsistent. The interaction also overlapped behaviour. intensify() was triggered constantly, which made the system feel like it was always reacting but not necessarily with intention.

These challenges pushed me to redesign toward a more deliberate trigger so that accumulation reads as system inscription rather than visual chaos.

Feedback

➀ Media Saturation

Building on Andreas’ interpretation of my identity-formation visuals, he read the work as a commentary on how we perceive media content today, specifically the overwhelming, continuous influx of information. He noted how content is consumed rapidly and discarded within seconds, and suggested that this could be developed further as a distorted or fragmented worldview shaped by fast-paced media consumption. This raised the question of whether my exploration could more explicitly address how social media conditions perception and attention.

➁ Micro-Experiences

A key concern was how these ideas could be communicated through micro-experiences. Andreas questioned how small, momentary interactions might be used to reflect the speed, repetition, and passivity of scrolling culture, and whether this logic could be subverted to deliver more meaningful or reflective content instead. The challenge is not only to replicate fast content delivery, but to interrupt it in a way that prompts awareness.

➂ Aesthetic → Conceptual Grounding

I was also questioned on my use of ASCII characters, noting that they currently function primarily as an aesthetic choice rather than a conceptually grounded one. To move beyond surface-level visuals, the work needs a clearer narrative or motivation, whether through interaction, storytelling, or moving image, so that users understand why they are engaging with the work. Rather than encouraging mindless action, the experience should provoke self-reflection, such as questioning habitual behaviours like doom-scrolling.

➃ Exhibition & Structural Coherence

Given that the project’s outcome is an exhibition contribution, Andreas emphasised the need to think structurally: how many works are involved, how they connect, and how they collectively communicate a coherent idea. Instead of a single, monolithic piece, he suggested considering smaller, focused experiments: possibly multiple short interactions where one clear action produces a visible system response. These micro-experiments could together visualise how systems shape perception and behaviour, making the underlying structure of media consumption more legible.