I want You to want Me

I Want You To Want Me," an interactive piece on the subject of online dating and relationships by perennial CH fave Jonathan Harris and his collaborator Sep Kamvar, and one of the standouts commissioned for MoMA's recent Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit, is the subject of this video. For anyone who missed the show at MoMA, the short explains how the piece represents constantly-updated info collected from dating sites using a drop-dead gorgeous interface and the visual metaphor of balloons.

Watching the balloons stream across the screen, chase themselves, reveal their bits of data and form into shapes is a trademark Sep-Jonathan delight unto itself, but the themes of human emotion, online communication and voyeurism (a continuation in many ways of the duo's famed We Feel Fine project) lend IWYTWM its weight. At times amusing and at times tinged with heartache, the piece is a heady meditation on the wonderful, horrible force of love. As they put it, the project "aims to be a mirror, in which people see reflections of themselves as they glimpse the lives of others." We think of it as somewhere between a love song and a thesis paper in the form of a touch screen art installation.