Pilvi Takala

FILTER: VIOLENCE AND ITS COUNTERSTRIKES

Invisible Friend is a free text message service for anyone who wants to have an anonymous, personal conversation with someone who will always reply. You simply send a text to the Invisible friend’s number and a writer on call will text you back. You lead the conversation, and a dedicated group of seven writers, acting collectively as your Invisible Friend, will give you their full attention.

A separate piece that emerged out of the same research is called Workers Forum. The work creates an interface to discuss the online protocols of care that are stripped of memory and content alongside human micro-labouring cycles that make their algorithm function. Both the Invisible Friend SMS-service and the video Workers Forum, were created out of Takala’s own experience with a “free text message service for anyone who wants to have an anonymous, personal conversation with someone who will always reply”.

Takala: “The conversations in the forum reflected a need to take responsibility for another person in a situation in which that was virtually impossible.”

www.invisiblefriend.fi