Caroline Sinders

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Social Media Break Up Coordinator

Sign up for a session with Caroline for a Social Media Break Up.

A woman stares directly into the camera while sitting at a desk. The room is lit up in green.

I am the creator and performer, with some research and policy collaboration from Fred Jennings. “Social Media Break Up Coordinator” is a performance piece that explores the very intertwined and interconnections of our online and offline lives.This piece has gone through three iterations since it started 2015. I am exploring the connections between our digital tools, and human intervention. Where do algorithms fail, and humans must intervene? As users of social media, people live their most beautiful, angry, complex, and complicated lives online. I am exploring a series of solutions following a break up and how to ‘coordinate’ à la therapist or social media coordinator for an ad agency one’s social media account following this messy un-coupling of algorithmic combinations intersections of multiple people’s lives. Like an algorithm, I am creating a series of solutions that can be combined for a variety of situations- following one night stands, best friend break ups, ending abusive relationships, ghosting, and long term partner break ups, as well as a myriad of others.

Every participant when sitting with me, as the Coordinator, signs a legal binding document drafted by my collaborator, Fred Jennings, of Tor Ekland law firm. This outlines that I am not a therapist and not held liable for damages. Then, users fill out a 21 point user quiz, which I prescribe answers out of an algorithm I hand wrote out and out less than 40 suggestions. Those suggestions can be puzzle pieces together to have the user feel like they are receiving highly personal advice, when it is in fact, algorithmically generated.

The way I started to think about:

romantic break up:

[ Suggestion A ] + [ Suggestion D ] + [ Suggestion F]

friendship break up:

[ Suggestion D ] + [ Suggestion E ] + [ Suggestion F ]

-Caroline Sinders

Two red chairs are in front of a wall with post it notes answering the question "what do you want to change about social media?" while the entire room is lit in red

A woman stands in front of a projection on a wall in a darkly lit room

Various arcade games are shown in a room lit in red

One arcade game is shown in a room lit in red with posters on the walls

A woman is sitting at her desk with a laptop and notes in front of her with a man sitting on the opposite end of the desk

The artists is sitting at a desk with many pieces of art hanging on the wall behind her — Caroline Sinders on a shoot for T Magazine in the late Madeline Gins’ studio.

Caroline Sinders is a Berlin-based machine-learning-design researcher and artist. Through her practice, she examines the intersections of technology’s impact in society, interface design, artificial intelligence, abuse, and politics in digital, conversational spaces. Sinders is the founder of Convocation Design + Research, an agency focusing on the intersections of machine learning, user research, designing for public good, and solving difficult communication problems. As a designer and researcher, she has worked with Amnesty International, Intel, IBM Watson, the Wikimedia Foundation, and others.

Sinders has held fellowships with the Harvard Kennedy School and the International Center of Photography, and has had her work featured in the Tate Exchange in the Tate Modern, MoMA PS1, and Wired Magazine, among many others.

Visit her website here.