Social Services V.1 Bystanders (2014-2016)

Installation text

Traditional notions of the public forum are no longer

Pictures on social media get more engagement than text or links

Facebook posts with images average twice the comments

Sight, sound and motion are of utmost importance to market capitalization

Does this intersection look the same as it did yesterday?

Visual content will dominate

One minute of video equals 1.8 million words

If they walk down the street with a megaphone would we look?

Social Services generates its own records. Onlookers reflexively respond to selfie-ready mirrored windows, rather than any specific instruction, and photograph acts of observing to post to social media. It sets up an experiment around how we portray and share ourselves in social networks relative to our own image, our immediate surroundings and projected online images of others in moments of pain.

More on this project and the instagram posts by passersby who interacted with the installation on the BUREAU of CHANGE website.

Web sources behind the glass | WE ARE WHAT WE SEE

Onlookers watch as a bullrider who had his hand caught in the rope is dragged   0 shares 

A Palestinian man reacts as he carries the body of his daughter, bystanders watch  58K shares 

Turkey’s prime minister says the thousands of protesters gathering in Istanbul’s Gezi Park are militant activists “living arm in arm with terrorism”   35,786 shares 

The photo was actually taken in 2011, and the “Israeli” soldier was actually a Palestinian militant once caught in a staged Pallywood scene (note all the onlookers eager to see how real cinematography works) 195 shares 

Angry protesters confront each other in Kowloon’s crowded Monk Kok district, Saturday, Oct. 4, 2014 in Hong Kong   6 comments   165 shares

An all too familiar (murder) scene in Philadelphia   5 comments 

A woman carries her child to escape from the burnt tents at Zattari Syrian refugee camp near Mafraq, Syria   1 comment 

Rescuers inspect the remains of a beach cafe hit by an airstrike while people were watching the World Cup semi-final  no data

Onlookers in Rhinebeck, N.Y. try to catch a glimpse of wedding guests  no data

Domestic Violence: Wife beater caught on tape punching woman gets attacked by crowd   364,812 views 

A crowd of onlookers watched as Delaney’s burned to the ground on Monday evening   0 comments 

Hundreds of bystanders watch Kepari Leniata, a woman accused of witchcraft, being burned alive in the Western Highlands provincial capital  321 shares

The noose is removed from around the neck of Balal; Iranian killer’s execution halted at last minute by victim’s parents   41,360 shares 

Distraught family members at the scene where three party-goers were shot at a barbecue early Sunday   6 shares 

Stunned onlookers watch as Lacertosa collapses in the street, having been stabbed with a butcher’s knife   0 comments 

An ethnic Hazara Shia is comforted by his relative after he arrived at the local hospital in Quetta to find a family member shot dead   140 comments  58 shares

Young relatives of the four boys from the Bakr family, killed during Israeli shelling, cry during their funeral in Gaza City   no data 

Daniel Endera, left, 25, is seen getting beaten by three men on a New York subway train in November, a fight that was videotaped by onlookers and uploaded to World Star Hip Hop   22 comments  826 shares 

Syrian Catholic priest beheaded by Jihadis as crowd cheers  82,313 views 

Onlookers in Rothbury during the police operation to find Raoul Moat  0 shares 

Indian onlookers use their mobiles to click photographs of the body of a farmer, Basappa, killed by a man-eating tiger   4 shares 

Anger: Onlookers became outraged at the auction of a Chinese boy and began to attack his father, who was caught in a head lock by another man   127 comments 

As news of the riots spread, families of the prisoners clamored outside the prison gates, rattling the chainlink fence and shouting at police for word about the victims  7 shares   5 comments 

Sue Meserve with the Lewis Fishery Shows Some of the Catch to Curious Onlookers   no data 

Gaza; Outdoor Cinema for Israelis  1 comment  5 shares 

A woman covers a child’s eyes as she looks at the corpse of a woman reported to have been shot dead by gang members in Guatemala City   no data 

There are a lot of people that have visited Israel; only a very small number of people have been in Gaza as well   44 comments  351 shares