Welcome to My Filter Bubble!

Workshop and installation | 2017

Illustration

In November 2017 NODE and Frankfurt Office for Youth and Social Affairs and Jugendbildungswerk hosted three workshops under a programme called Digitale Welten. The workshops fostered participation in the digital world and the Internet. My 2-day workshop called Welcome to My Filter Bubble! focused on reflecting our preferences and freedom of choice online, while the other workshops created animations and sounds. The workshop outcomes were exhibited in the context of the youth film and media festival visionale17 at the Gallus Theater in Frankfurt.

Making bubble Making bubble Making bubble

Our bubbles

We started the Welcome to My Filter Bubble! workshop by discussing our online behaviours, such as what social media platforms, apps and games we use, and in particular what kind of videos we watch. We were a small group of participants and helpers with various ages from eleven to forty. Our internet preferences were quite different. For example, unsurprisingly, I had no idea of the young German YouTube stars with millions of subscribers.

Bubble outside Bubble outside Bubble inside

Bubble detail Bubble inside

Installation

After getting to know our personalized online worlds, the aim was to visualize our filter bubbles in the form of a physical installation. Large, transparent acrylic half-spheres served as the basic structure. We also had various DIY materials for covering the spheres and some LEDs for lighting. The idea was to hang the decorated bubbles in the ceiling in the exhibition, so that visitors could stick their heads into them.


Altogether three bubbles were made, each with a different angle on the workshop theme. One played with the idea of contrasting the inside of the personal online bubble with the outside world, another with the comfortable and the non-comfortable things in the Internet, and the third one with losing the view to the outside.

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Thank you!

Special thanks to Jeanne and NODE for inviting me to do this workshop. Many thanks also to Katharina, Theron, Janik and Celine for helping out with the workshop and to all the participants for opening up their filter bubbles.