Lilly Lulay observes how the smartphone has changed the way we produce, share and store photos. In particular, how our images are automatically cataloged and analyzed by algorithms. “Digital Dust” is a self-portrait of the artist based on all the photos his smartphone has taken and received in a year. The strips of fabric, which look like rolls of film, are actually timelines. These are screenshots from the artist's Google Photo account, a cloud where his smartphone stores all of his images and organizes them, not only by date and location, but also by recognizing their content.
Each strip represents the increasing amount of images that we create and share with our smartphones in the space of a month, and aims to make us aware that these new photographic practices reveal to digital companies our interests, our behaviors and the places we frequent. The metadata of our photos can thus describe us much more precisely than the biometric photo of our passport, while the Covid-19 crisis has triggered a public debate: are states allowed to use the location data of citizens? And why would Google be authorized to collect and analyze the content of this data?