Photo of John Wild - Searching for a Psychometric Lover

Searching for a Psychometric Lover

A 3-week residency at the Royal College of Art that explored peoples willingness to hand over their most personal and intimate sexual desires and fantasies to an anonymous online service.


Searching for a Psychometric Lover presented a algorithmic dating experience with a twist, participants were asked to answer a series of psychometric tests used by popular dating sites. Under the guise of finding a perfectly matched sexual partner, the tests asked increasingly intimate and personal details about the participant’s sexual fantasies. Participants were incentivised by a gamified strategy that offered prizes for participants with the closest matching psychometric scores.


Before entering the system participants had to agree to a set of terms and conditions that gave ownership of their data to John Wild.


Data gathered from Searching for a Psychometric Lover was reused in the installation stolen.data/confessions.