Author: shenl2@andrew.cmu.edu

Body Movies, created by Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael
Lozano-Hemmer, aims to transform public space with interactive projections ranging between 400 and 1,800 square meters, depending on sites in different cities.

Thousands of photographic portraits were taken ahead of time in the host city, and are shown using robotically controlled projectors. However, the portraits only become clearly visible inside the projected shadows of the passers-by, whose silhouettes can measure between two and twenty-five meters depending on how close or far away they are from the powerful light sources positioned on the ground. A video surveillance tracking system triggers new portraits when all the existing ones have been revealed, inviting the public to occupy new narratives of representation.

This project precisely represents Colangelo’s view on “media abound in these agglomerations of space, technology, and people”, and become “connective tissue that allows us to communicate with one another and our environment in unprecedented ways”.  The installation invites viewers to actively interact with the projection by only revealing details when a viewer’s shadow is overlayed onto projected images. It creates intimacy and connection between individuals and also broadcasts the message to a larger community because its massive volume and high visibility.

Click for Project’s original website 

The Heart Archive – Christian Boltanski

French artist Cristian Boltanski started this project in 2008, collecting people’s heartbeats around the world as a proof of their existence. The Heart Archive, a small single-installation museum on Teshima Island in Japan, is a site to permanently store and display these heartbeats. Visitors can also record their own heartbeat on site.

The exhibition is made up of three rooms. Recording Room collects visitors’ heartbeat; Listening Room has three computers where you can listen to recorded heartbeats in the archive; Heart Room, which is the most experiential among the three, plays heartbeats from different people, with a light beaming in synchronization with the heartbeats. You will see your own reflection in the mirrors on the wall, in the flickering light.

This project creates a conversation that transcends time and space, in forms of both collective memory and personal narrative. Heartbeat is the very representation of life, and also one of the most intimate sounds of a human body. Listening to the heartbeats was like experiencing the liveliness of another human being.

Listening Room

Heart Room

Volume – SOFTlab

Volume is designed by New York based design firm SOFTlab, using responsive mirrors to “redirect light and sound to spatialize and reflect the excitement of surrounding festival goers(Volume-SOFTlab)”. The installation is comprised of 100 mirror panels with an array of cameras to track the movement of people around the installation. The mirrors will turn to the nearest person, while the sound increases volume when more people approach the project. The light reacts to the ambient sound in the space.

This installation is an experiment using lights and sounds to reconstruct the empty room and blur the lines between ephemeral and physical space. Instead of simply responding to viewer’s movement, it creates a bilateral conversation by staring back at viewers and collaging the viewer’s image back into the space reconstructed by their movement. It not only manifest small vibration of invisible particles floating in the space, but also creates a strong self-awareness of one’s own being.