Nick Vyssotsky: (Cobwebs Spun Back & Forth In The Sky)

'(Cobwebs Spun Back & Forth Across The Sky)' is a montage of videos culled from various social media platforms including Instagram, TikTok, Tumblr, and Twitter, set to a medley of Philip Glass compositions originally featured in the 1982 Godfrey Reggio film 'Koyannisqatsi.' The videos sampled in 'Cobwebs' were not sought out for any specific purpose by the artist, but rather were selected surreptitiously by the artist 'liking' them during time spent using social media. By means of social media platforms’ function of providing the user with a catalogue of 'liked' posts, the artist inadvertently created an archive of their experience being online via the casual act of 'liking'. Thus, the work exists both as a sort of self portrait of the artist's life online and simultaneously as a portrait of the internet as a whole. Whenever a person uses social media, they are inevitably exposed to a broad spectrum of content, either posted by the accounts they follow or, as is becoming more common, shown to them by the platform's algorithm, as it continuously trains itself on the content that better holds our attention. This content is usually offered up to the user without a great deal of context for what they are looking at. Ultimately, it is up to them to create the meaning behind what they see. 'Cobwebs...' is in this way a simulation of the experience of being online, filtered through media culled by one user, a subjective refraction of the digital spaces within which we live.