Your face is not really your face — not anymore at least. I mean, technically it still belongs to your physical body, but it's just barely hanging on. 

 

No, our faces have become something more. Something better, even! They have been uploaded into the all knowing (all loving) Cloud, floating in cyberspace for anyone to see, to access, to do whatever they wish with. Our faces are now raw material, intermingling with all the other data we generate digitally through our social media accounts, our jobs, our government records, just waiting to be used for something greater than ourselves.

 

True privacy is a thing of the past — and isn’t that great? We’re more connected than ever, to the point where we no longer have anything to hide (or to hide behind). Sure, you could try to conceal yourself behind a pseudonym or alter ego, but the truth is always revealed eventually. And, don’t you know how easy it is to track an IP address? To find a house on Google Maps? To search out your mother’s Facebook page and send her a message? Besides, what are you hiding from anyways?

 

The Singularity is nearing. Ray Kurzweil predicts by 2045 technological progress will bypass human achievement, and we will in turn become human-machine amalgamations - or something like that. The point is, in the next few decades we will become more machine than human, eventually leaving our physical bodies behind. And who needs a body anyway? Won’t it be better when we’re all in the Cloud, having hundreds of interactions with each other all at once at all hours of the day? Communicating no longer like humans, but like mycelium networks or the roots of trees, breaking the boundaries of what we thought was limited by our brains. We won’t need a face anymore because there will be only one true face made up of billions of floating data points.

 

We were all made in G-d’s image, but perhaps we have been able to perfect His creation in the Cloud. Breaking the bounds of what it means to be an individual, realizing we are all one in the same in the virtual world. Could it be humans + virtuality = heaven? A space where we are all equal to imagine each other as we please. To share one face, or perhaps thousands, none truly belonging to us. Ownership is dead in the virtual world. We are forced from individuality to share the glorious, digital bounty. Should it be said that we must now cut our face to spite our nose?

 

Anyways, it’s Faculty Appreciation Week here at the Cloud™, so be sure to thank our TechLords for all that they do to make you less you! Lunch for the week will be your usual serving of Soylent with an extra helping of spicy sriracha Crickets. Yuuuuummmmmmmy! <3

 

Chris Hansen, 4/20/2023
 

Miranda Klein is a mixed-media artist based in Rhode Island. Her work explores the body, dreams, life, death, and circles.

​

Jack Meisterich is an artist and illustrator interested in reinterpreting archival materials, internet imagery, and uncovering the absurdity in the banal. He is a graduate of Purchase College, SUNY and is based in Brooklyn, NY

 

Christopher Michael is an artist based out of {REDACTED} who is interested in spirituality and folklore as they relate to digital cultures and virtual worlds. Soon he will be pursuing a PhD of Media Study at the University of Buffalo.

Tom Pretty is an American artist based out of Berlin, Germany. Each year Pretty produces hundreds of music videos, releasing each into the ether, across anonymous YouTube pages, unannounced and mostly unreceived. Pretty has no social media presence, no physical following, and no method of public interface beyond experiences with his art. Pretty has agreed to show a select 29 of his music videos, but has no intentions of following up with the curators after this exhibition. His practice is a rare example of artistic production outside the influence of an audience.