Part of Hybrid Realities :Lab 1 (Lab → Output)
Virtual installation, Newart.city
Proxy Judicator examines the conditions of contemporary digital existence - a landscape shaped by surveillance, algorithmic mediation and self-exposure.
The work begins with the familiar gesture of awakening the screen: light flickering across the reflective surfaces of phones and monitors. These “black mirrors” become portals into systems that both serve and observe us. Within these systems, everyday behaviours - scrolling, sharing and browsing - are transformed into data streams that are monitored, monetised and recirculated.
The environment reflects a culture saturated with images of consumption and self-performance: curated meals, idealised vacations, aspirational bodies and promotional messages delivered in endless succession. Personal expression becomes entangled with systems of advertising, voyeurism and algorithmic judgement.
Proxy Judicator situates the viewer within this feedback loop. Identity fragments across notifications, archived messages and algorithmic traces. Privacy dissolves into contractual infrastructures accepted through platform terms and conditions.
The work frames digital culture as a paradoxical space of empowerment and entrapment. The systems that monitor us are built through our own participation. In this sense, the proxy becomes both judge and subject - a mechanism through which digital life observes, evaluates and reproduces itself.
Berto Herrera