Nikola Gajdosova | The Scattered Self: The Embodiment of the Self in the Cyberspace

 
The *The Scattered Self* investigates the concept of self-identity in the digital era, where the self is dispersed across multiple online platforms. The central idea was to collect pieces of myself that are scattered across the internet, and try to reconstruct my digital and physical identity through a data collection of online traces. Through this process, I discovered that most of the posts I used for analysis contain a love note, a short poem that turned out not only to be the fact of me missing the places I left, but also longing for the pieces of myself I lost.
By engaging with the problem of identity in the digital era, this project tried to create a new way of looking at how we address the self and understand who we are. The temporality of the user-subjects immersed in the space of calculation and profiled by data extraction is warped, and the project tries to find a way to reconstruct one’s digital and physical identity through a data collection of online traces. These are accompanied by a decentralised dialogue that leads the user through the different ways of thinking about the “lost pieces” displayed as glass pieces.
Every color represents different pieces of information from the online identities I analysed over the semester, with the number representing the %. The glass pieces, representing the lost pieces of myself, are arranged in a mosaic-like formation, forming a visual representation of the fragmented nature of our digital identities.
In the midst of this exploration, the love notes emerge as a poignant element of the artwork. They symbolize not only a longing for the places left behind in the digital realm but also a yearning for the lost pieces of oneself. These love notes serve as a reminder that behind the data and online traces, there are emotions, experiences, and connections that are part of our sense of self.
Ultimately, *The Scattered Self* invites viewers to contemplate the complexity of their digital identities, the traces they leave behind, and the ways in which they are dispersed and interconnected.