As we consume and produce more media through ubiquitous digital technology, our relationships with our selves are changing. The saturation of daily life with digital stimuli generates existential crises, anxiety, and disconnection. We do not understand the world around us or who we are within it. We get lost. In an era of excessive information sharing, identity confusion, elevated self-consciousness, and fear of the future, we need a way to reflect on our own thoughts.
Inspired by the ancient Greek techniques Michael Foucault describes in his “Technologies of the Self” seminar, the project is an attempt to bring back the lost sense of subjectivity, defined as one’s own individual and personal understanding of the world. An I consists of a digital platform with an Artificial Intelligence embodied through an avatar of myself that learns from me since young age. Through weekly meeting with my digital self and the collection of my online information, the artificial intelligence learns from me and I am able to learn from myself. Different than talking to a friend, a psychologist or a family member, the other is me.
With the same principle that truth is subjective to one's beliefs, the AI is able to collect words which I say constantly and we are able to create together our own dictionary of meanings to be later reread. The platform helps me to create and visualise my own understandings. Talking to my Digital Self challenges the idea of being in front of myself as if talking to a mirror. This time, the mirror has artificial intelligence and confronts me with my own thoughts.