SYSTEM//HUMAN

I created this series to simply ask: What happens when we use technological systems to describe human experiences?

• When we use technological systems to describe human experiences, we begin to see ourselves through the logic of the system. The systems we created for machines begins to describe us more accurately than we expected.

And that produces something interesting: the system becomes a mirror.
It takes things that are emotional, messy, contradictory, intangible and gives them a technical vocabulary:

• Identity becomes username / password / profile
• Belonging becomes permission
• Absence becomes user not found
• Self-presentation becomes edit profile
• Comparison / rejection becomes username taken
• Growth becomes profile 87% complete
• Memory / attachment becomes storage full
• Failure becomes error 404
• Boundaries becomes privacy settings
• Attention becomes notifications
• Time / existence becomes screen time
• Exhaustion becomes shut down
• Change becomes system update
• Letting go becomes recycle bin
• Starting over becomes factory reset

And that's why this collection is more than "technology is  being human." It's more like "We translate ourselves into systems."

And once translated, we start treating ourselves according to their rules. A person can become:

complete / incomplete, verified / unverified, connected / disconnected, available / unavailable, accepted / rejected, correct / incorrect, active / inactive, found / not found

Those are technological states. But human beings don't actually work that way, you can be incomplete and still whole, disconnected and still deeply connected to someone, lost without being "not found", changing without needing a system update and unable to explain yourself without being an error.

SYSTEM//HUMAN is the tension between these two realities.