I Was Raised on the Internet

American Artist
Sandy Speaks 2016

American Artist's online chatbot Sandy Speaks is inspired by the legacy of Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old African American woman who was found dead in a jail cell in Waller, Texas, on July 13, 2015—three days after being pulled over and arrested for a minor traffic violation. While her death was ruled a suicide, a grassroots movement coalesced to cast doubt on the official account. Those involved demanded to know: What happened to Sandra Bland? Users can ask the bot a limited range of questions related to Bland's death and American policing. The work's title is taken from a series of videos Bland posted online in the months preceding her death, which touch on politicized issues such as police brutality and mass incarceration.

Anna Anthropy
Queers in Love at the End of the World 2013

Chris Collins
Hitch (beta) 2017–18

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E. Jane
E. The Avatar, Ep. 1–7 2015

E. Jane's YouTube series E. The Avatar both embraces and critiques the ways that identities are performed online. Touching on topics like net neutrality and selfies, E. Jane's persona narrates her experiences as a disembodied presence on the internet in a deadpan, sarcastic tone, which contradicts her almost utopian descriptions of life online. E. Jane created the video series—as well as a product line featuring her face and body—to work through questions that arose around her realization that, as a black American woman, her body is often unprotected. “What if the body were code?” she asks. “What if the body were only a simulation? What if I could exaggerate how inhuman I feel?”

Femke Herregraven
Liquid Citizenship 2015

Citizenship is no longer based just on where you were born, who you are married to, or where you apply to live; it is now something that can be bought and traded. Using available data on exemptions and opportunities—such as purchasing passports and human smuggling—Liquid Citizenship allows users to navigate the process of acquiring citizenship in another country. As the artist Femke Herregraven explains, “In a landscape where the liquidity of citizenship is accelerated by commodification and deprivation, Liquid Citizenship offers a glimpse of the increasing possibilities of how this legal status can be dropped and picked up at will—or by force.”

Femke Herregraven
Taxodus 2013

Taxodus simulates the unofficial and largely invisible offshore economy that allows international corporations to protect their wealth. Created by Dutch artist Femke Herregraven, the online game asks you to act on behalf of the company of their choice. Your objective is to set up the most efficient tax intermediaries and subsidiaries in countries around the globe in order to lower taxes on your company's profits. Since most of the data behind the game is unavailable to the public, Herregraven views Taxodus as a way for people to gain firsthand knowledge of global tax sheltering. “I could have made a bunch of data visualisations for example but I wanted to make the audience dodge tax themselves,” Herregraven says. “I think by playing you understand more of how companies cut up their legal bodies in order to organize their income most profitably.”

Francis Tseng
Conspiracy Generator 2017

Francis Tseng
The Founder 2016

Developed by artist and former Silicon Valley employee Francis Tseng, The Founder is an online game that satirizes the profit-driven world of tech startups. Your goal is to disrupt the technology market with an innovative new product. On the path to success, you face a series of choices that determine the performance of the imagined company, such as cutting costs, hiring employees, and maintaining morale. But as you get wrapped up in the premise and seductive design of The Founder, the pursuit of efficiency and endless profits may become more sinister than fun. As Tseng explains, “At some point, if I get the game's design right, the player will ask themselves: is this actually a reasonable way we should want the world to work?”

Heather Phillipson
STATUS EPILEPTICUS 2018 MCA Commission

(British, b. 1978) 
STATUS EPILEPTICUS, 2018
Website
Commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Ingrid Burrington
1,033 Objects 2014

Ingrid Burrington's online work 1,033 Objects draws attention to a system that is so massive it is hard to envision—a US government program that provides police departments around the country with excess military equipment. Burrington's website randomly pulls 1,033 items from the program's extensive online repository of data, which was made publicly accessible in 2014. As the artist explains, 1,033 Objects gives you “just a glimpse of this really large thing. If you try to take on the whole totality of the thing, you might actually miss the point.”

Jayson Musson
ART THOUGHTZ 2010–12

Under the guise of the exaggerated online persona Hennessy Youngman, artist Jayson Musson created a series of YouTube videos over two years called ART THOUGHTZ. Adopting the popular form of tutorial or “explainer” videos, Musson tackled institutional power imbalances, racism, and insularity by offering ironic critiques of various aspects of art history and the art world. Through his alter ego, Musson humorously challenges the cultural authority and politics of the predominantly white and wealthy contemporary art world.

Jeremy Bailey
Lean Artist Chicago 2017–18 MCA Commission

In 2016, self-styled “Famous New Media Artist” Jeremy Bailey founded Lean Artist, the first startup accelerator designed exclusively for artists. Participants receive funding and expert mentorship in startup methods to help them conceive and actualize companies that not only earn revenue but also act as subversive, critical artworks. For his MCA commission, Bailey is working with four Chicago-based artists—Shawné Michaelain Holloway, Jon Chambers, Óscar González-Díaz, and Mashaun Ali Hendricks—to develop products that solve a social problem.

Porpentine Charity Heartscape
The Shape You Make When You Want Your Bones To Be Closest to the Surface 2018 MCA Commission

Sara Ludy
Low Prim 2012–ongoing

Low Prim features images that Sara Ludy has collected over the course of several years from online browsing and image searches. As you click through the website's simple interface, a succession of 12-image grids takes you through strange, often dark, corners of the internet, offering a voyeuristic glimpse at Ludy's online habits. The title refers to the online world Second Life, in which Ludy participates, where “prim” (short for primitive) are the building blocks that make up every object in the virtual universe. Houses and furniture are often described as “low prim,” a reference to their relatively simple designs.

Shu Lea Cheang
Brandon 1998–99

Brandon is inspired by the story of Brandon Teena, a 21-year-old transgender man who was raped and murdered in 1993. Shu Lea Cheang's visually layered online artwork, recently restored by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, uses pop-up windows, chat rooms, and flashy nineties computer graphics to help users explore and understand Teena's tragic death. The website references other cultural touchstones in the ongoing struggle for transgender rights and visibility, including the iconic drag documentary Paris Is Burning and the gender philosophy of Michel Foucault. These allusions connect Teena's story to the broader histories and politics it helped transform.

Zach Blas
Facial Weaponization Communiqué: Fag Face 2012

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