Becoming Someone is a multi-modal concept that lives across Medium, Instagram, and human minds. It is comprised of The Ever Contracting Void, an Instagram-based container by Micah Epstein commissioned by Manuel Cebrian and Iyad Rahwan as the visual metaphor for the essay Becoming Someone. The Ever Contracting Void is a media container that exists within The Directory of Worlds, an installment in Micah’s ongoing Instagram installation. The Directory is a series of accounts, called "worlds," which serve as spaces for exploration and reprieve from Instagram’s visual overload and hyper-targeted marketing. Where his previous worlds were an opportunity, the Void is a threat. The Void contains nothing but the source code of popular social media websites, which use machine learning to drive the internet ever inwards upon the individual. Trapped in its center is an individual, whose very identity hinges on the viewer double-tapping the screen to like the image. What remains, when the Void closes upon the individual, leaving nothing but pristine white grids and information superhighways?
Read the articulation here and explore the visual container on Instagram here.