Client:
new media artist & film director Ziv Schneider
My Role:
Digital Installation Designer and Developer
Project Supported by:
The Brown Institute for Media Innovation
Sylvia is part of the IDFA DocLab R&D program 2020
in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Showcased at:
International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam 2021 DocLab
Awards:
- winner, 2021 Lumen Prize for Art and Technology in the Still Image category
- winner, Special Jury Prize, the Digital Dozen: Breakthroughs in Storytelling Awards by Columbia Digital Storytelling Lab
- nominee, IDFA DocLab Competition for Digital Storytelling
Press Coverage:
Variety and Yahoo Entertainment, "The Life and Death of the Instagram Influencer Who Never Was"
Next Avanue*, Meet Sylvia, The Virtual Influencer
Immerse News, DM for Collab*
Project Minisite:
http://www.myfriendsylvia.com/
https://ohyay.co/s/sylvia
Design & Development Tool:
Cinema 4D (Arnold Renderer) / 3d modeling and rendering
Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Pro / render visual touchup and video editing
TouchDesigner / audio visualization
Ohyay Platform / digital exhibition space
Full Credits:
Created by: Ziv Schneider
Styling and Art Direction: Odie Senesh
Character Artist: Halime Maloof
Celebration Director: Bethany Tabor
Natural Language Processing: Alex Calderwood
Digital Installation Design & Development: Tong Wu
Music: Philippe Lambert
Aging Researcher: Alexa Fleet
“Instagram is full of wannabes, but there was only one Sylvia
— Variety”
While 46% of the US adult population is age 50 plus, an analysis of online images found that only 15% include people this age
Virtual influencers have demonstrated a new phase in media representation. According to Christopher Travers of VirtualHumans.org, “They are cheaper to work with than humans in the long term, are 100% controllable, can appear in many places at once, and, most importantly, they never age or die.” (Bloomberg)
Co-written with AI, “Sylvia” is a storytelling experiment that disrupted the virtual influencer landscape for a short period of time. Unlike her “peers” who are designed to appear young forever, Sylvia was designed to age rapidly.
She posted to Instagram from July to November 2020, and during these five months, her image aged five decades, from 30 to 80 years old. Her death
During IDFA DocLab that took placed on November 2020, audiences looked back on Sylvia’s life, and also witness its end.
The death of Sylvia was announced at the opening ceremony, and a mourning space remains open during the IDFA festival for public to come, gather and celebrate the life of Sylvia.
My delivery as the installation designer and developer: / the highlight video of Sylvia
/ the celebration room - visual design and rendering
/ the celebration room - deployment on the virtual platform with the highlight video playing
/ the flower room -
visual design and audio visualization video made with TouchDesigner
/ the flower room -
time-lapse video of the flower room during the celebration ceremony, in which the audience come to leave flowers on-screen, with the music visualization video playing in the loop as the background