Week 5 - Lecture Notes [Erica Scourti]*

Erica Scourti

Born in Athens, Greece and is now based in London and Athens.
Her work crosses different media draws on personal experience to explore life, labour, gender and love in a fully mediated world.

Her project, Life in AdWords 

Reading the self through a commercial algorithm

"The author doesn't die in the age of information but rather is transformed into a profile."
- David Joselit

Body Scan

Using lo-fi media, Scourti photographed different parts of her body using a visual recognition app.

Affectiva
This is a facial scanning software which gives you a visual reputation of your emotional profile. Used by advertising agencies to cross-check the emotional output of their adverts.

The online-self has an important impact about how you are betrayed. It is a social index provider

Proxy server is a computer that functions as an intermediary between a Web browser and the Internet.

"People use proxies in order to deal with the Terror or Total Dasein or an economy of presence based on the technologically amplified scarcity of human attention and physical presence."

- Hito Steyerl, The Terror of Total Dasein

Everything in some sense can be copied, but not one's physical presence.

"Today, no artist can afford to hide behind a work - she is expected to perform herself as well."

- Isabelle Graw, High Life: Art Between Celebrity and the Market

Technology with digital assistance that helps you with your everyday life usually takes the form of a female presence when humanized.

- Siri

- Self-checkouts

- 'Her' in the Spike Jonze film

- Digital voices

A lot of her projects are things taken from her everyday life that anyone could attempt if they wanted to.

Empathy Deck (2008)

Tarro, horoscopes and healing cards,