AutoBiography

AutoBiography is a video installation by Anders Bojen and Kristoffer Ørum in which the artists rewrite their biographies through a mathematical system that continuously generates unstable interpretations of their identities. The work examines the autobiography as a cultural phenomenon and the staging of artistic identity, setting up a tension between the impersonal logic of systems and the personal search for self.

The installation combines mathematical structures, popular psychology, video, narration, sound and custom-designed software. Biographical material such as family photographs from their suburban childhoods is merged into an endless series of alternative life stories. Following Erik H. Erikson’s model of personality development, a voice-over chronicles formative experiences in their lives. At the same time, abstract projections of colour and computer-generated sound evolve according to the same underlying logic.

Transparent mobiles with polarisation filters cause the overlapping projections to shift constantly, creating a spatial interpretation of a hybrid and unstable identity. What emerges is a narrative of the self that is both enacted and undermined by an indifferent system — an algorithmic account of personality, filtered through the lenses of psychology, technology and cultural expectation.