Valia Fetisov is a visual artist from Russia currently working on his Masters in Surveillance Architecture at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Germany. In his practice he often alters standard algorithms and works with automatic systems in order to bring into view their ambiguous nature, making them take on a threatening, rather than auxiliary form. Fetisov has taken part in exhibitions, such as General Rehearsal at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2018), The Electric Comma at the Palazzo delle Zattere, Venice (2017) and Qidian at the Zendai Zhujiajiao Art Museum in Shanghai (2017).
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During the Digital Earth 2018 - 2019 fellowship Fetisov research conditions influencing people to unintentionally participate in certain actions, for example, the social credit system in China and Facebook’s mood manipulation studies. By studying these techniques of manipulation, Fetisov aims to merge them into a single interactive space in order to investigate the decision making process of its participants. The fellowship provides him with the possibility of conducting an in-depth study into how a specific environment can influence our behaviour, and what happens to our behaviour when small details within that environment are changed.