The Problem that has No Name

June 11, 2015

The Problem That Has No Name, 2014

is a project that is relevant to today’s media context, while responding to a landmark project from the past. This is an HTML experience that is Inspired by the critique that Betty Friedan’s ground-breaking book the Feminine Mystique offered on the manipulation of publication media over American women’s identity and behavior. A set of instructions guides the user from a tumblr-style-endless-scroll of women’s selfies into a “deeper” look at whomever is clicked on. At first it seems to be just another curated set of social media images one might stumble onto while browsing.  As an image is clicked on it expands and surprises the user with a set of behavioral instructions, scraped from wiki-how.com. These generally align with the time of day such as work hours or dinner time or going out, and are a glimpse into the conflicting inner dialogue. Another click zooms into the close-up and reveals that the image is in fact made up of the collective images of the social media personae. This fills the screen until it is again the endless scroll of selfies—representing a problem that is cyclical. This project “interrupts” common paths of experience while critiquing the environment in which it lives.