Refresh follows the adventures of Sylvia, a twenty-something girl lost in the world of social media, searching for her identity. Is she lonely? Angry? Curious? Hopelessly desperate? Maybe she is a narcissist, or maybe she just wants to connect.
Launched in 2015, refreshthemovie.com presents viewers with a randomized glimpse into Sylvia’s daily routine every time they refresh the page. She might be taking a cab across town, capturing a selfie, watching animals at the zoo, or simply lying aimlessly in bed.
Behind the scenes, the project functions as a behavioral experiment. By measuring audience analytics, the site tracks how often users engage with Sylvia’s life through repetitive clicks—testing whether their behavior mirrors the addictive loops of the platforms Sylvia herself is trapped in. In a modern landscape defined by doomscrolling, the project erases the line between the subject and the voyeur; the viewer's compulsion to refresh becomes the final piece of the film.
