Founder’s Award 2017

Nicole Ruggiero, Molly Soda & Refrakt, Slide To Expose

Slide To Expose is an augmented reality project by Nicole Ruggiero, Molly Soda, and Refrakt. The project explores digital intimacy, privacy, the concepts of life and death online, and ultimately asks how devices, particularly our phones, aid, form, and reshape our perceptions of these experiences.

We experience a virtual reality through an infinite sequence of call and response behaviors — posting content, gathering likes and comments, receiving praise, or criticism. Everything we do virtually, whether it’s our intent or not, invites interaction. Our memories, our emotions, our reactions are tied to our devices, and the interplay of ego validation and ego death brings forward an interesting juxtaposition, a flurry of thoughts constantly present at the forefront of our conscious that remain hidden as onlookers virtually pass our feeds and physically pass our bodies.

Experienced as a bedroom, a typically private space, the installation presents as a physical still life. As visitors enter the room they’re invited to use their phones as augmented reality triggers, scanning the objects of the space, and exploring the room to find private displays of a digital consciousness that secretly overlays the objects. Scanning a pillow creates a text message, scanning a mug generates an email, each, together, creating a second living layer in a constant state of fragmentation and regeneration. An infinite cycle of new life and immediate death all in one space.