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I saw a very interesting project a few weeks ago in Jersey City at an exhibition featuring a range of arts, including interactive art, paintings, etc. In this project, there is a camera that picks up people’s faces and recreates them using squiggly, long, noodle-like shapes, and projects them on a wall.

At first, I didn’t know what the piece was doing, but after stepping back a bit I could see that the camera was picking up faces and recreating them in a fun, creative way. I appreciated it because it made people curious and gave them a laugh after looking at their silly, distorted reflections.

I’ve seen interactive art that has similar principles of using camera recognition and distorting or changing the information it picks up. I knew it involved code, and I was in a state of awe, wondering how it did that, how the artist made this happen.

Something that might have been cool would be if the distorted image stayed put together for a bit longer; once the face(s) in front of the camera moved, the squiggly noodle-faces would fall apart almost instantly. That encouraged people to stay still and watch the squiggly portrait appear, however, so I think the fact that the art was so ephemeral was also a point of interest that gathered an audience.

I think the artist’s inspiration probably came from their ability to make creatively with code, and to encourage their audience to explore, interact, and question.
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