Day 4: Travis & Przemek: Daily Grind

      Today was day 4, a much simpler set up than last night.  Daily Grind was perhaps the most controversial work in the exhibit.  Made by Travis and Przemek in Berlin, it opened for us a window in the world of gay male cruising through the Apple Iphone application Grindr.  The artists set up a website replication of the app through which we could witness their communications with other gay men in their proximity.  The site allowed us to the see the faces and stats of the people displayed.  Each profile contains a photo, age, and distance from the user.  Optional information included was relationship status.  This work challenged notions of privacy on the internet and in telecommunication applications.  We often presume that because we are part of a small community of users or because we set our privacy settings to a certain level that we are safe from those we would wish to avoid.  In truth this is not the case, whether you are using a hand held device or online social networking, no matter what you do whatever you put "out there" will be catalogued and can be seen by people unknown to you without your consent.  Most likely the people accessing your information and history will be corporations and government departments, but you cannot know what they will be using it for.  

      Daily Grind also calls into question the nature of gay male culture and the question of sex versus romance.  On a certain level Grindr is designed for hook-ups and not necessarily lasting relationships.  This is an initial response and the truth may be that it is up to the various users to decide what they are using the application for.  The site also functions as a method for people who are mapping out their identity to explore gay sex with an assumption of privacy.  

    Many people are finding relationships through the internet and there is a certain level of success, I heard a statistic today that about 1 in 5 relationships have started off through various forms of internet communication.  This is yet another reality of the digital age.  People can and do truly forge intimate connections online and I am sure this will become a feature of smart phone use in the near future.  I wonder how much love for an individual you can have when your entire experience with them is mediated by a screen or does there come a point when all the chatting and photo sharing necessitates an in person meeting.  

     Daily Grind also allows us to see an example of people crafting an identity, in this case, from a limited amount of information.  Here the projected self is a sort of mating ritual where you exhibit your good looks to obtain gratification.  Your interaction will decide whether or not you're successful.  Is this any different than picking someone up in a bar or on the street, perhaps this offers increased efficiency to getting laid, you can figure out who is in your immediate proximity or if there is someone who is particularly attractive you can easily find out where they are before you meet them. 

     I am curious how people of other sexual orientations would respond to an application like this, whether they are lesbian, bisexual, or straight.  Gindr is an interesting application that might also have benefits to those who have certain requirements whether they are fetish tastes or ethnicity or religious beliefs.  Grindr is a way to sort out who are looking for and who you would like to avoid without necessarily being in the same room as them.   

    With Daily Grind Travis and Przemek have created a work of art that has the potential to start some very interesting discussions about privacy, romance, and the screening of sexual partners.  Unfortunately you will have to take my word for it as the website is currently offline.  Below I have added their artist statement to allow them to explain the work themselves, free of my analysis.  

Travis and Przemek
Daily Grind
Interactive HTML webpage, 2011


The work we create collaboratively addresses concepts of control in
male/male social interaction, and it is a reflection of the lives we
live. In the context of this exhibition, we are interested in
magnifying our interaction with Grindr - a new form of social activity
that we engage with on a daily basis. Grindr is a closed social
networking environment that operates on the iPhone and has been
created to facilitate sexualized male/male social interaction. The
cyberperformance consists of a constantly updated web re-creation
of our Grindr experience: chat history of the people we
communicate with, their photos, and their location away from us as
determined by GPS. By projecting this web page in a gallery setting,
the viewer will be able to have a one-way interaction with the
application, and be a voyeur into our private social interactions.

We are seeking to break the closed loop that exists within Grindr –
the perception of belonging to a semi-private social group of gay/bi/questioning
men that have the economic means to participate. The network
exists in a grey area between public and private, and it is under
numerous levels of corporate control. Users have an expectation of
privacy, but the closed network that they perceive to be “safe” can
easily be contravened. Every message and photo sent on Grindr has the
potential to be exposed to the outside world in many ways: the
receiving user can store and distribute the data by taking
screenshots, Grindr moderators can access all data sent and received,
and it is possible that Apple can also intercept this information.
In the context of this performance, the data perceived to be private by Grindr
users will be communicated to a broader audience in order to
reinforce its truly public nature.