“How The Internet Changed My Life” is a participatory documentary by Nicole Ruggiero, where viewers encounter the elusive entity of The Internet through personal stories. Presented as a large-scale installation, this exhibition includes mixed reality portraits, VR worlds, an AR face filter, and a retro website, sharing life changing moments with The Internet as active experiences.

Nicole’s VR collaborators include artist and developer, Daniel Sabio (The Glad Scientist) and music composer Dylan Banks. The VR experience was originally developed for the Magic Leap and was later converted to the Oculus Quest 2 with hand tracking. In this world the player interacts with memes to “deep fry” them in order to deliberately emulate the effect of reposting the meme over and over. This VR world is (1/4) created for the exhibition.

"How The Internet Changed My Life" was previously shown at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in Düsseldorf, Germany (2021) and at HeK Basel during Art Basel in Basel, Switzerland (2021).