SMARTPHONE STACKS © Florian Mehnert 2019

SMARTPHONE STACKS, 2019

SMARTPHONE STACKS is an artistic photo project. Florian Mehnert has stacked and photographed young people with their smartphones. (see also photo project REFUGEE STACK, 2016) Behind the art project SMARTPHONE STACKS there are important current questions: Today, the smartphone is the main tool of communication for the "digital natives". WhatsApp, Snapchat and Instagram are the most used tools of communication. How do smartphones change the way we communicate, but also the quality of our communications? Are Whatsapp and Instagram replacing a differentiated discourse and the personal conversation? 90% of over 959,000 apps in Google's Play Store track user behavior and deliver data to a third-party network. The smartphone is the fundamental tool for collecting personal data. Human behavior is evaluated and monetized. This involves the probability calculated by algorithmic systems and the prediction of consumption and purchase intentions. The destruction of privacy and human dignity is accepted and systematically undermined for economic purposes. Smartphones therefore serve not only as tools of communication and as a windows to the world, but also as monitoring and data collection devices.
We live in the age of "surveillance capitalism" and the "privacy paradox". Although we know about the destruction of our privacy and dignity, we agree to the collection of our behavioral data. The SMARTPHONE STACKS visualize how the human being is reduced to a well calculated data material. The SMARTPHONE STACKS provide visual access to reflection on the role of the smartphone and our privacy.

Extract from the photo series

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