@t_r_u_m_p_i_n_g

Computer, screen, social media, hair piece

Images from @t_r_u_m_p_i_n_g

As we watched the US Presidential race unravel, it was plain to see much of today’s electoral campaigning is undertaken digitally on social media. Donald Trump, is frequently seen to stir up controversy through his often bewildering Tweets and statements.

The piece collects and converts images posted to social media in support of Trump, averaging each image’s colour and placing a digital brick of this colour to a screen until the screen is full, whereby the resulting image is then uploaded to Twitter with hashtags used most often by or relating to Trump. The screen is then cleared and the process repeated. Each following full screen is uploaded along with all proceeding images in a batch, building a digital wall, a nod towards his proposed construction along the Mexico/US border, increasingly leaving an imprint on the Trump campaign.

Through this process the algorithm increasingly incorporates more versions of itself into its creations, a process which essentially 'eats itself’.

The volume of Tweets generated by the bot drew attention and it found itself caught up in the conspiracy surrounding hidden information within images posted by Russian spies, leading it even have its own thread on Reddit’s r/the_donald.

Twitter: @t_r_u_m_p_i_n_g

Featured as part of:
— Conspiracy: Logan Symposium
— Machine Made: Art, Robots and AI
— MozFest 2016
— Mozilla Pulse

Produced as part of Cosmic Latte