Misha's Blog

Syracuse University’s libraries have extensive archives or both common and rare media. Their collection just got that much more unique with the inclusion of Solace 2.0: A Performance in Radiation, an installation/performance by yours truly Misha Rabinovich. The project deals with making one’s mark on the world, manifest destiny, surveillance, and social networks.

This project is an installation because of its transmedia form encompassing books, movies, pictures, and video. The installation includes a computer which is hosting and running the Solace 2.0 Social Media Platform. This platform automatically engages social networks so the user (currently just myself) can sit back and focus on other things. The project is also a performance because the identity of the user is split up through the engagement with the platform into a separate online entity that travels on its own.

The installation features several images representing various attempts by different entities to “make a name for themselves” and to be “masters of their domain” ranging from the monumental and permanent to the feeble and ephemeral. Among these images stands a computer monitor, framed in glossy black and gothic red. The monitor shows a grey map with red map markers specifically placed to outline the face of the user. As the points disappear and reappear over time the face exhibits a shimmering quality.

The points represent locations of actual real world venues (restaurants, businesses, etc) which have been registered in a geolocation game called Foursquare. To play such geolocation games, people ‘check in’ to locations they are currently at using their GPS enabled phone. Solace 2.0 checks the user into locations automatically, without the user having to go anywhere. It also publishes the checked-in locations on Twitter.

Everyone is encouraged to visit and experience the installation firsthand at the Bird Library and to pick up a free brochure. Please stay tuned for more information and updates on this project (you can even grab the RSS feed for your reader here). Thank you to Ann Skiold for opening the library for this work. Thanks to Holly Rodricks for proof reading and Caitlin Foley for exhibition consultation and general support. Thank you to Megan Foley for sponsoring this installation. Thank you to Matthew Williamson for pointing out how this falls in with “Griefing” (I will be writing about this soon).