Have You Ever Thought About The Influence Of Offline Recommendations?

In the online world, there is such an abundance of data, that every recommendation about products or posts that we see, is tailored to fit our trail of data crumbs we leave along the way.

These pieces of information are then grouped to fit a broader segment of ‘peers’ – online users with similar habits, tastes and… clicks, who can influence our purchase decision, or our next likes and shares, maybe even emotions and reactions!

The study of the aforementioned inspired a creative duo, London-based artists Scott Kelly and Ben Polkinghorne to create a series of installations commenting on the system of online recommendations, only this time, in an entirely offline setting.

According to The Verge, the artists were visiting their homeland in New Zealand, when they came up with the idea of creating banners and place them across various outdoor spaces and landmarks. These banners read “People who liked this also liked…”, in an obvious nod to all e-commerce mega-platforms and to social media networks who serve users with contextual contents, based on their likes and comments trail, or as the creators say “Collaborative filtering recommender algorithms.”

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How would online recommendations work in an offline setting? Two artists give us a glimpse.

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All images courtesy of Scott Kelly and Ben Polkinghorne

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