Parasite
Thesis Faculty:
Jesse HardingParasite is an immersive VR installation that uses the metaphor of parasitism to explore how algorithmic media systems shape desire, attention, and the feeling of autonomy. The participant wears a VR headset covered by an alien-like mask, with biometric sensors attached to their bodies and connected to the VR environment. The mask appears to attach to the face and transform the participant into a host rather than a user. Through VR experiments, physical prototyping, and user feedback, this project explores invasive intimacy, how something that begins as beneficial and pleasurable can slowly become invasive, shaping our behavior and reducing our sense of autonomy without us fully realizing it.
Inside the headset, the participant will experience generative visuals created in Touchdesigner that are designed to feel seductive, pleasurable, and almost hypnotic. I use the visuals to represent the reward loop created by technology and AI, the pleasure, convenience, stimulation, and instant gratification and dopamine hit they give us. At first, these systems feel helpful and comforting because they make life easier and provide quick answers. But over time, we gradually become more dependent on them, relying on technology to think, create, remember, and make decisions for us.
This project does not argue that all technology is evil. That would be too simple. My interest is in ambivalence: the way technology can be useful, beautiful, pleasurable, and harmful at the same time. Like a parasite, it may not destroy the host immediately. It may even help the host adapt. But over time, the relationship can become so normalized that the host forgets what life felt like before attachment. This project is intended to demonstrate that an artwork that is both alluring and intrusive, intimate and exploitative, can better reflect the true nature of our relationship with digital systems than a purely detached critique.
