Tansy Xiao

Here's the Information We Collect
Artistic Discipline: Interdisciplinary
Category: Brooklyn Arts Fund
Grant Year: 2023
Location: Sunset Park
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Tansy Xiao is an interdisciplinary artist who creates theatrical installations with non-linear narratives that often extend beyond the fourth wall. Her work examines the power and inadequacy of language, furthermore, substantiates the multiplicity of being human through the assemblage of stochastic audio and recontextualized objects. Here's the Information We Collect is a multi-channel interactive video installation tailored to respond to selected privacy policy on major social media platforms. The audience members are invited to engage with the work by speaking into a microphone. Their words will be processed by a pre-coded speech recognition program to match the key words to specific sonic elements performed by professional vocalists, creating a dynamic and evolving musical score in real-time. The project employs the privacy policy of a particular cyber enterprise as an entry point to explore the implications of our online data and the tension between privacy, surveillance, and the free flow of information in the digital age. It also calls attention to tech corporations' collection and capitalization of user data behind the scenes as a form of digital colonialism.

Image: Dual by Tansy Xiao