Created during the Libyan uprising, Idris retrieved sensitive public information live from Facebook and immortalised it in print on a tracking slip. Viewers could choose which rebels to investigate, and pin their tracking slips on a huge black pinboard.
By presenting public Facebook data through a completely unsettling and ‘friendless’ interface, Idris highlighted an important question: social networking sites seduce us into sharing, but do they do enough to guard us from the consequences?
Idris won the George Eady prize for strong conceptual and creative thought at the 2011 University of Brighton Graduate Show, and I was invited to exhibit it again at Brighton Digital Festival that year.
Idris was created in support of an accessnow.org digital privacy campaign:
"Facebook should be congratulated and condemned in one go: they've built a revolutionary platform that's catalyzed the political change sweeping the Middle East and beyond, but Facebook has also become a treasure trove of information for dictators, allowing them to identify and track down those who oppose them."
accessnow.org/page/s/facebook-unfriend-the-dictators
Music: 1969 by Boards of Canada
