Jens Wunderling is a media artist based in Berlin, Germany, who is primarily active in the field of interactive computer design. His on/offline media projects of various scales are ultimately new forms of digital communications which come with broad approaches in an experimental nature. In this light, default to public is a controversial online interactive project that is technically simple but touches on a variety of critical issues related to Twitter. Dealing with privacy, one of topics often mentioned when discussing Twitter, this project is framed to show how people feel differently about self-exposure in both the online world as well as in the physical world outside Twitter.
default to public will be introduced as a form of Tweet Screen in this exhibition. The work is a sort of networked projection which collects tweets that are written near the installation site and reveal their geographic locations. They are then displayed back to a public space such as a street or museum space. At first, Tweet Screen appears to be a uncomplicated project, but from a broader perspective, it endows tweets with a sense of ‘publicness’ if even for a short time, by transmitting them from private to public space.
Another interesting viewpoint of this project is its system of sending feedback to the sender of the original tweet, in the form of photo taken by a webcam and a message stating that the tweet has been shown in public. The artist expects that the process will be a catalyst for communication in the online world, as users become both puzzled and curious as to why their tweets have been displayed in an unintended place.
default to public can be interpreted as one aspect of current digital culture, that is, an online world where people expose themselves easily, in a seemingly contradictory fashion considering people’s tendency to protect their privacy in the physical world. It is proof that, unless we do not activate privacy options in the initial setting, the default structures are pre-set to expose our daily lives.
