EchoChamber

2024

Annabel Kajetski

Immersive video installation 300cm x 700 cm

Duration: 00:05:38 ,Language: English, Swedish, English subtitles

Recycled mirrors, HD video projection, Real-time, digitally processed video feed

Picture from the Kuvan Kevät exhibition by The Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki 3.5-2.6.2024. Model in images: Matilda Keränen.

EchoChamber is an immersive installation featuring a video that explores themes of entertainment and surveillance. The video begins with artist Annabel Kajetski discussing the fall of Rome, drawing parallels to how modern entertainment may distract us from the emergence of new power structures driven by relentless data collection. Mirrors play a key role in the installation, symbolizing constant surveillance. However, when Kajetski faced legal concerns over potential copyright issues with the mirrors and had to consult a lawyer, the work shifts toward a deeper question: who is permitted to use whose data and materials?

As visitors leave the installation, they are confronted with an unsettling realization—an AI has been silently scanning their every move, creating a disturbingly personal profile of them.

Link to video: https://youtu.be/Q_-yeLvdPTs

What the AI does: The AI program is watching over you while you are watching the video instide the mirror room. The program tries to determine what emotions you feel and if you stay for over 5minutes it makes a profile of you. The profiles scroll by the exit door for 15minutes and after that the program automatically deletes all data of you. All data is restored on a local hard drive.

Technical specifications: The emotion recognition program is using MediaPipe files and is based on a code by Rattasart Sakunraats, that in itself is based on Kazuhito Takahashis gesture recognition program with MLP. The code is written in Python and modified with the curtesy of the Apache v2 License 2004. Programmers: Sofia Haapamäki, Teodor Adolfssons ,Tuomo Rainio and Annabel Kajetski. Artistic content by: Annabel Kajetski