Solo

“Solo” is a presentation of the same-titled digital application, which is addressed to those who have experienced, and are yet to experience, urban solitary confinement.

The app’s R&D process is based on research and reflection upon the relativity of time, the fundamental significance of human touch and smell, the debated boundaries between the real and the metaphysical, and thus the question of whether to remain in the current condition or to move forward to another.

Does loneliness have time, smell, and texture? Or is it characterized by the complete absence of such qualities? Can we digitize emotions?

Can we experience time through the time of literary works? Does the clock get hacked?

Is the skin an autonomous desiring-machine with its own intelligence? Does the skin have its own agency? And if so, can we hack it? Is loneliness just the boundaries of our flesh, or something more than that?

How can we digitally reproduce smells?

How do we lead ourselves towards self-awareness?

And if we become light, if we disembody ourselves, if we move to another dimension, will we still be solo?

People-digits, or people-desire machines? Does loneliness have time? Does it have smell and texture? “Solo” is a video artwork based on a Vasileia Dereli and Marialena Vyzaki’s idea about an app that will contribute to coming in terms with a universal urban isolation. The app calls for experiencing the relativity of time awareness, as well the importance of smell and touch, which becomes apparent through their absence. It calls for reflecting whether our new algorithmic existence leads us towards a gradual loss of our physicality, and dares to pose the metaphysical question of ‘here’ and ‘hereafter’ at the heart of our choices.