No Fun
No Fun is a work by 0100101110101101, the pseudonym for artist duo Eva and Franco Mattes. It is an online performance on the randomized chat website Chatroulette, and depicts a simulated suicide by Franco whilst recording viewers' reactions.
Artist Biography
Eva and Franco Mattes were born in Italy in 1976. Neither are formally trained, and have worked together since 1994. They are based in Brooklyn, New York, but travel throughout Europe and the United States.[1]
Formal and Subject Analysis
This piece was recorded on the chat website Chatroulette, and shows on the right side of the screen Franco hanging from a noose, while on the left side a reel of viewers look on to the scene that is unfolding. Their reactions range from complete apathy, to ridicule applauding the victim's actions, to one single viewer showing concern and calling police. A laptop lays open in the right screen, in which the viewers can see themselves, and this assures them that the situation is happening in real time.
Critique
No Fun plays on spectatorship and the bystander effect. [2] As social media grew into everyday life, we were automatically exposed to a broader range of news, knowledge, and the world. We are immediately exposed to millions of users online. Though so much is readily available to us through the internet, it is this excess that leads us to indifference and passivity; simply being bystanders. Chatroulette is a website that automatically connects users randomly through video chat. The title No Fun is a play on the concept that users come to this website for entertainment, yet they are instead confronted with a serious situation. Though disturbing, most viewers remain unmoved due to the desensitizing nature of the internet.
We talk to each other in the online environment more than in the real world. We become strangers if we are not protected by the computer.[3]
It is very true if you observe people in everyday life. In the observation in No FUN, there are many people talkative. This throws me a question, ‘Would that be the same if what they saw in the screen was happening at the right front of their eyes?’ A deduction I can make from this is not owing to the essential viciousness lying in human’s true mind, but due to the matter of participation pattern resulting from internet culture.
In the virtual environments, people tend to have more responsibility to help others in a larger group rather than in a smaller group.[4]
In No FUN, those looking at the screen were in a small group of people. If in a larger group, they would react in a different way with more responsibility.
Exhibition Techniques
No Fun was part of Eva and Franco Mattes' first solo exhibition in London entitled Anonymous, untitled, dimensions variable (2012).[5] It is set up like a typical home computer, with a screen, CPU, a desk lamp, and a rolling chair. Headphones are provided for the viewer to watch the piece. It emulates how a viewer would use Chatroulette in the safety of their home.
References
- ↑ Eva and Franco Mattes
- ↑ Brooklyn Rail.
- ↑ The Bystander Effect
- ↑ David against Goliath?
- ↑ Carroll/Fletcher.Anonymous, untitled, dimensions variable (2012).
Author
Kathleen Escanan, 2014