The Portrait in a Mirror was a work I spotted yesterday when I posted about Taiwa-Hensokuki by Yuko Mohri. Both formed part of an exhibited entitled Extended Senses at ICC in Tokyo last year. Created by Kim Dongho, Yim Sungyul and Kang Kyung-Kyu, the installation changes the appearance of the approaching user.
Through analysis by a video camera and image sensor, the image of the visitor is displayed on a mirror-type LCD monitor. The style of the image that appears is determined by the distance between the work and the visitor. As the visitor approaches, his image changes from an ordinary mirror image to something like a painting. This work explores a new approach to portraiture in the digital age.
Not overly awed with this particular work I do have an interest in how mirrors and new media can be used to distort connections / relationships between the ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ - essentially blur distinctions between representations and simulations. Some similar work includes M_M_, Miroir Aux Silhouettes, a_mirror, MirrorSpace, Reface [Portrait Sequencer] and MotionMirror.
Two installation works which employ two computers each to generate a dialogue.
Taiwa-Hensokuki (image above) by Yuko Mohri is an installation consisting of two computers which converse. The computers:
each equipped with speech synthesis software and speech recognition software, interact: the text that one computer reads aloud is analyzed by the other, which reads out the results for the other to analyze. That process is repeated throughout the day, during which the text gradually mutates.
Permanent Vacation (image above) by Cory Arcangel consists of two computers which endlessly bounce auto-replies to each other saying their user is away. The audience are not permitted to see the emails themselves just the inbox’s of the users who every so often hear the hear ding of a new email arriving. Marisa Olson’s review on rhizome questions:
Could this exchange go on forever?
It seems it could continue until the network connection is broken, the computer runs out of space or is shut down however what I’m curious about is how did the exchange start? Surely it was initiated by one user at one of the computers? So is this a statement about the break down of user communication or the lack of any real intelligence in automated systems?
Some related personal work, Video Network #1: Dialogues, while not text/language based does create a dialogue between two parts of the installation.
is an urban intervention designed to engage people in actively marking up public space.
Created using the labs own NextText Java library (which is also available for Processing):
The project reconfigures private communication technologies into private-to public (p2P) tools. Our motivation for providing a public outlet for privately-produced messages is driven by an interest in addressing the ongoing media reconfiguration of shared urban spaces which favors commercial global consuming culture over personal or local points of view. Our targets are the large-scale LED screens that are increasingly found in Western urban cores. Cityspeak provides a means for urban inhabitants to talk back to these giant screens.
Users can send messages to the public displays from mobile devices or desktop computers (see diagram above) effectively reappropriating the city for every day users through a number of individual broadcast strategies.
A few months ago I posted about the art work of Gordon Pask and then about Levelhead, Reactable and the kids toy by Bandai, Cube World. The form of a cube, it’s tactile qualities, the use of sides as navigable elements but most particularly the idea of connecting the sides seemed to be a shared theme. Levelhead and Cube World in particular use this aspect of connecting sides as a means of extending and navigating the ‘virtual’ space of the games involved.
Bandai have released another almost cube like game, Tuttuki Bako (image above and videos below), which while this time has nothing to do with connecting cubes to extend the ‘virtual’ space has the possibility instead for the user to physically intervene within the space of the game. There’s something very obscene about this augmented reality game, knowledge of the Japanese language is not required to understand that in the first of the two videos below however it is an interesting attempt to make a low end haptic game.
Above is a screenshot of the performance Surveiller Punir “Double Contraintes Foucault” (for documentation) which I posted about a few days ago and has just finished on the Panoplie website.
