In 2016, when this work was made, the OED word of the year was ‘post-truth’, referring to the willful distortion of reality through social media leading up to Trump’s first presidency. Alongside this, there was growing recognition of the Internet’s ethical problems, including routinely compromised user privacy, and algorithmic bias, re-inscribing social inequalities. This heightened awareness of the dangers of the Internet primarily concentrated on the individual user, but often did little to directly challenge the political economy of ‘tech’. 

William Linscott’s XCIII is an effort to problematise how we think through these concerns in a way that extends beyond for/against readings of technology. At the same time the work contends with the ‘binary thinking’ afforded to the user, where everything is presented as easily comprehensible, transparent and calculable. XCIII invites us to consider the visual language of the digital interface and the conditions of an internet dominated by large private platforms, both in 2016 and now, nearly ten years on. The Roman numerals in the work’s title, translating to 93, may be interpreted as alluding to the year that the Internet was made free to users, and the first open-access browser, Mosaic, was released.

Installed flush against the gallery’s exterior window, the work could be read as an overblown personal device, as the illegible but mesmerising documentation of another era, or as a layered series of glassy screens, each as sensitive and as tough as the translucent membrane of the eye itself.

William Linscott is an artist and educator who lives in Tāmaki Makaurau. He recently completed a doctorate at Elam School of Fine Arts, culminating with the exhibition For better and for worse at George Fraser Gallery (2024). In 2023 William participated in the Maumaus Independent Study Programme and had a residency at Hangar, Centro de Investigação Artística, both in Lisboa, Portugal. Prior to this he was involved in running Samoa House Library (2019–2022), and before that, Window (2017–2018).