Visit the website:

www.siamesedarling.com

We have been living in the world of digital since the credit card replaced dirty bank notes and heavy coins. Digital photography has demolished film photo systems with its lower cost, easier, and faster processes. Literally tons of documents now shrink into digital data formats that fit onto a small thumb drive. We can receive information, meet people, and visit places across the world through using the internet. We can even sing songs that we don’t know, as if we were singing in a band, as long as we have the right Karaoke program on our computer. Digital and internet technology has become a core need in our lives as it makes everything ‘easier’, faster, wider; while erasing certain boundaries altogether.

Changes have occurred less in daily life perhaps, but these things have changed our lifestyles, including the romantic worlds we engage in. Most of us used to date someone in class while we were in school; we date colleagues at work, date the friend of a friend that we met at a birthday party, date a stranger we met while walking the dog. We basically date the people that become involved in our daily lives. But that might not be so easy if you are a shy person. It takes courage to introduce yourself to a stranger, not knowing if they are single, or interested in dating, or interested in you.

Online dating creates opportunities to interact with many more people than we could normally meet in reality, with unlimited possibilities as to who they are, and where they might be; crossing towns, cities, countries, oceans, culture, gender, and age, too, in one click. Online dating draws people in because of the enthusiasm and hope of maybe finding someone interesting to exchange thoughts and romantic messages with; meet for a drink, date, possibly leading to true love, and marriage?

There are numbers of online dating sites all over the world. The dating sites in Thailand are very popular among foreigners and Thai singles. The exotic images of Thailand’s beautiful beaches, mountains, and food, come along with the fantasy of the Thai lady; the very feminine, gentle, caring and submissive women that has apparently become hard to find in the West. The combining of ritual traditions and warm cultural values, with the openness to mixed race love, both gay and heterosexual, somehow can make Thailand appear like a dreamland or “Paradise” to Westerners.

Among such Westerners are those who search Thai online dating sites with a plan to visit Thailand, looking for a nice local lady to accompany them on their trip, making it more memorable and ‘comfortable’. For some foreigners the fantasy of the Thai lady is one that could join them as life companions. Some would like to move to Thailand permanently, marry and have a family…

For more than one year I have been deeply researching online dating, and it gave me an increasingly strong awareness of “Virtual Reality”; the perfect blend of the two contradictions; who I am, and who I wish to be? We recreate our own personality based on something of who we really are, while searching for someone with the ideal personality, imagining this person in reality, up to finally meeting them in actuality.

“Siamese Darling” is an interactive online dating site operating within the framework of conceptual art. It is a window to present the idea of fantasy and false reality, while stimulating live interaction with the audience, and between the audience. Though it will look functional and similar to other online dating sites that already exist, “Siamese Darling” will begin with a number of different (fake) profiles using the same face; my face. Then, once the website is launched publicly, any one can gain access to see it, register, and create their own (real) profile(s), and get in contact with other people via exchanging messages. The mix up between “real” and “fake” profiles in this website is actually not very different from the fake and real information you see on other “real” profiles found on ordinary dating sites.

“Virtual Reality” is not limited only to the electronic space, but could expand to the real world of space and time, the world of face-to-face, and take over our perceptions of it. In turn, the “virtual” world becomes our “real” world.

Sudsiri Pui-Ock
March 5, 2009