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BLENCE NETWORK™ INCORPORATED, 2024–2025, 1-channel video, 10:40 min, color, 1920x1080
© Domenik Töfflinger / httpjpg
Submitted on 29/09/2025 by Domenik Toefflinger for the Final Examination at Kunsthochschule Kassel under Prof. Joel Baumann and Prof. Jan Peters in the New Media class
BLENCE NETWORK™ INCORPORATED is a fictional corporation in an intermediate world—an audiovisual system that exposes compulsion as a product. The work examines dermatillomania as a neurophysiological cycle of tension, action, and reward, reflecting it in the mechanisms of capitalist media environments. Fragmented video and sound sequences intertwine personal experience, digital overstimulation, and economic logic.
The “corporation” serves as a metaphor for a system that creates needs in order to immediately exploit them: attention becomes currency, the body becomes an interface, impulse becomes a resource. Every action remains trapped in the cycle of self-optimization—a permanent readjustment that promises relief but produces exhaustion.
Between documentary observation, sample aesthetics, and auditory overload, a loop emerges that offers no solution but rather reveals its own architecture. BLENCE NETWORK™ INCORPORATED is thus less a narrative than a diagnosis—a media experiment that translates personal compulsion, neural mechanics, and capitalist structure into one another.
BL~E~N~~C~~E~~ N~~E~~T~W~~~O~~R~~K~~™~~ ~I~N~~C~O~~R~~P~~O~~R~A~~T~~E~D~~:~ A~~N~~ ~A~U~~D~~I~O~~V~~I~S~U~~A~~L~ ~M~~A~~N~~I~FESTO
A thesis on dermatillomania as a neurophysiological compulsion loop, mirrored in capitalist media environments.
I. SYSTEM BOOT: INTRODUCTION & CORPORATE MANDATE
BLENCE NETWORK™ INCORPORATED is an evil conglomerate inhabiting a liminal universe—an audiovisual exploration of skin picking (dermatillomania) as a neurological, emotional, and (un_)a?e?s?t?h?e?t?i?c cycle.
The body becomes a site of habit and loss of control, experienced through immersive sequences of music, webcore aesthetics, gaming samples, and pop-cultural references.
The experience unfolds in real time, through the lens of personal experience, where attention narrows, impulse control falters, and every touch or visual cue becomes significant—a semi-automatic process resonating with atypical reward pathways.
The fictional company BLENCE NETWORK™ INCORPORATED serves as a metaphor for capitalist compulsion and reward loops. Within this narrative, personal experiences with dermatillomania are documented and translated aesthetically.
BLENCE INTERNAL MEMO: ON PRODUCT DESIGN
The user is not the customer. The customer is the loop itself. Our product is the temporary resolution of dysphoric tension through a targeted, ritualized action. The user interface is the skin. The currency is attention. The transaction is always a loss, creating the need for the next transaction. We sell the solution to a problem we design.
