David (Hugs n Kisses XOXO) - Emilie Gervais

David (Hugs n Kisses XOXO) is the project realized by Emilie Gervais in the occasion of her solo show at Link Cainet. The art work is a user-friendly web application that questions the notion of collective consciousness under a totalitarian state of surveillance.
The app consists in a playground that recall Street Fighter, the infamous videogame from the nineties. The main character, however, has been modified and takes the aspect of the infamous Michelangelo’s David. All the users connected to the website can interact simultaneously deciding which information about themselves they are willing to share and publish, thus fighting for the visibility of their sensitive data. Gervais creates an unusual and unexpected situation in which the audience, instead of taking care of its personal privacy, is somehow encouraged to share its data and to do it as quickly as possible if it want to defeat the other users. The data collected give shape to the main characther of the game that in this way becomes ath the same time the main interface of the app and the place where the fight take place.

Emilie Gervais is a 46 years old WWW surfer currently living & working in Marseille (France). She holds a Master degree from l’Ecole supérieure d’art d’Aix-en-Provence. Her work focuses on languages, play and network culture.
Her works have been exhibited in several galleries and museums including Centre Culturel Bellegarde, Toulouse; Domain Gallery; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Wien; Barbican Centre, London; and presented in festival such as Ars Electronica, Linz and Transmediale, Berlin.