Otto Byström’s artwork 9 Billion Apps is a collage of diverse elements, all of them found or purchased online.

On social media and on consumer culture

The work’s soundtrack depicts a conversation between a capital investor and Mark Zuckerberg concerning social media’s effects on society. The animation in the background – a car in an urban landscape –  was purchased online, to which Byström has added a toilet character, also found on the internet. These advertising-like aesthetics connote the fast-moving consumer culture and commercial nature of the media. On the other hand, the monotonous soundtrack and uneventful moving image suggest a resistance to fast consumerism.

Apocalyptc mediatation

Byström himself has called the piece an apocalyptic meditation. Byström works in a time in which the digital media shapes our identities and world views: the tug-of-war between private life and public forms of control defines our existence. We live on the conditions of commercialism.

Otto Byström is a Helsinki-based artist and a member of the Sorbus collective. He works with diverse techniques: sculpture, printed materials, performance and music.