COLLISIONcollective

Underneath the Skin challenges our personal suppositions of soul and what remains after the body is gone. Without a body, we are neither male, female, short, tall, pretty, frail, hungry, tired, cold, amorous athletic, nor forgetful. As the body may be thought of as a temporary skin that houses the soul, then what is the nature of what lies underneath the skin? The multiplicity of meanings of the term "skin" and its psychological components are mirrored in de-familiarized skin imagery and abbreviated digitization. Forming meaning from the fast-moving text is similar to the activity that one engages in while trying to determine the nature of oneself by decoding and arranging the clues and events that occur over the time span of experience.

This piece is a nine foot tall structure that holds a projector at its top, and projects moving images down over itself. The images are carefully masked, so that they land precisely on one or more different panels at different times. The imagery has to do with buildings under construction, and often includes images of the sculpture itself in different contexts.

FaceLifter is an interactive video installation that allows the viewer to see his/her face projected on a 3d mask. The mask is mechanically raised and lowered to allow the viewer to see him/herself eye-to-eye.
An outline of shoes marks the spot on the floor where the viewer can get a closer look at FaceLifter (and FaceLifter can get a closer look at the viewer). The viewer's faces is illuminated by lights mounted on the column. A web camera mounted above the mask captures the viewer's image, which is algorithmically identified and processed with a hidden computer.
The mask, rendered in white acrylic resin, is mounted on the surface of a column attached to vertical rails. A computer controlled motor inside the column lifts the mask to the height of the viewer.
A video stream of the face is projected via two ceiling-mounted projectors. The projectors are mounted diagonally to allow the viewer to get close to the mask without casting a shadow. The images are adjusted vertically by the computer to track with the mask.
The overall effect of the installation is to allow the viewers to see themselves as they appear to others.
The face finding algorithm is by Philip Abbet, from the IDIAP Research Institute, in Valais, Switzerland.
Thanks to Jennifer Lim, Vivien Leone, and William Tremblay.

'Medium Grind' explores the feedback loop that exists between the news media and events that are reported and represented. As it is impossible to observe something without changing it, the phenomenon of instant news and live coverage further complicates this cycle as it creates new representations of events before they have finished occurring. The news media itself is a powerful influencing factor on the very events that it reports upon. The media spin gets magnified over and over again, feeding back upon itself, making it impossible to determine what caused an event to happen in the first place. Yet real events, real bullets, and real lives forever get reduced to source material for a brilliant media spectacle.