t’s Coming a Storm, an installation by Kevin Roark Jr

It’s Coming, a Storm investigates the engineering of attention by creating a simulation of its own, using virtual avatars to symbolically embody a number of successful attention-gamers. Data from online social media and news organizations is used to track and geometrically quantify the amount of attention that each individual is receiving in real time. New dopaminergic slivers of attention grow and deform otherwise motionless 3D bodies. The avatars’ faces twist and grin with pleasure, and they accumulate Attention Coins in piles. Virtual idols and shrines are constructed from incoming images. Sounds produced in collaboration with Thomas Martinez play and reverberate as new information filters in, generating a soundtrack controlled by the dynamic entanglement of attention sources. Over time, the size and shape of each person reflects their total obtained attention since the start of the simulation—the best players physically expand throughout the space. The literal manifestation of attention-gathering in each person’s body facilitates a crystalline view of their ability to maintain power through relevance, and into the connectedness of our perception of success in the map and success in the territory.The simulation is supplemented by various sculptures, and a separate projected collective attention container in which viewers contribute their own online activity.