REVEAL

PROJECT

Sarah Hodges

“Is our fundamental right to freedom of expression being threatened?”

With this question in mind, Marcel Top starts to investigate mass surveillance in the United States. Sara Hodges addresses the artist’s concerns over the safety of democracy in surveilled societies. With his project ‘Sara Hodges’, Top questions the current use of these technologies, finally exposing the possible threat they represent. Sara Hodges is a non-existing, algorithm-generated, American citizen. To create this online fake persona, Top started by gathering over 50,000 Instagram posts that used the hashtag #iloveamerica (I love America). Starting from these posts Top was able to generate new non-existing pictures through machine learning.

The online presence of Sara Hodges reflects the online presence of other ordinary people, who in the sight of surveillance technologies, represent the perfect American citizens After the online presence was built, Top brought Sara Hodges into the real world.

He created a 3D model of the face, that with the use of silicon and a 3D printer could be turned into a mask that everyone could own. By bringing this fictive perfect citizen ‘alive’, Top hopes to create a tool for people to claim and exercise their fundamental right of expression, without the fear of being identified and tracked online.

ARTIST

Marcel Top

Marcel Top is a 23-year-old London-based Belgian photographer. Alongside his traditional use of photography, Top also explores the limits and boundaries of the medium through his practice. In other words, he applies his documentary practice to his experimental work. Top has always been fascinated by the power of technology, by the ambiguity of its double-faced nature. Breach of privacy, mass surveillance, and the collection of personal data are among Top’s recurring topics. Throughout the last year, the photographer rethought his practice to capture that part of technology he could not frame with a camera.