Viral Vice

For centuries, society has been confronted by vices in form of behaviors and habits. The Christian church classified these into the seven deadly sins. Viral Vice encounters the seven sins within modernity. Over the last few decades, digitalization interfered with our morals. Social Media, AI’s and having the ability to search for anything within seconds, but also the growth of the population, capitalistic politics and the materialism that followed with it, actively influence the way we behave. The internet is a huge archive that collects data all over the world and presents to us many similar situations and phenomena as so-called memes. Until digitalization, we couldn’t see the vast numbers of similarities that existed.

Taking networked dynamics of content distribution and reception as a starting point, we collected clips that manage to reflect deadly sins in a contemporary setup. We asked ourselves how and if these sins are still able to influence our social behaviors. Therefore, the installation invites one to ask these questions and to judge your own behavior towards society.

Each of the 7 videos showcases an example of a characteristic that is connected to a deadly sin and is combined with questions people ask towards sinful behavior.

Anya Hilfiker, Bennett Smith, Matthias Pfammatter and Yannique Richard.