Origin:

I try to think about the connections between worlds, and I narrow my idea down to humans . Focus on the connections between people. Trying to simplify the complex interwoven relationships, trying to highlight the basic attributes that make people human. Here I want to borrow the Buddhist idea of “eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind”. These senses constitute our body’s sensors of the outside world. I picked the eye.

Vision is what the eye sees. Sight constitutes the image that is sent to our brain. Based on this instinctive behavior. I want to emphasize the powerful power of vision, especially the power of gaze. In daily life, people rarely have the opportunity to observe a person closely (due to politeness), and rarely have the opportunity to see more people (due to regional or social class barriers ).

 

Goal:

Create a random, bold, serious “gaze” that includes both “strangers” and “self.” To arouse people’s sense of curiosity, awareness, friendliness and positivity towards other people in the world, calling on people to look at themselves. “We are part of the world,” and we ourselves are random particles.

 

Form:

Ideal display scene: shopping mall; An art museum; Community center; The railway station. (The location is open, and the population is diverse)

Open Time: The exhibition could theoretically be open 24 hours a day, as the idea is that people from all over the world should be able to attend.

 

Design:

A simple front desk (also as a waiting area) with a digital poster screen in the background. Behind the front desk is a darkened corridor connecting the exhibition space, which is approximately a 5x5m dark room, lit by night lights on the floor, and the surrounding walls are sound-absorbing materials. There is a vertical 50-inch display in the center (with LED light strips in the bezel).

 

Process (user perspective) :

Perhaps you were attracted by the poster, or came across an art exhibit in the mall. When the audience came to the front desk, the staff simply explained: “As this is a Live interactive art installation, during which your faces will be recorded and photographed, but all the data will only be used for the art exhibition itself.” Viewers can sign a consent form if they wish. Then waited at the reception desk to enter the exhibition. The staff said, “Please carefully gaze at the person on the screen inside, because this is a solo art experience. Try to control your emotions.” When the audience comes to this round, first of all, they will pass through a darkening corridor, and the original noisy background sound of the shopping mall will gradually fade away, replaced by the background music of meditation. At the end of the corridor is a dark, quiet space (meditative music in the background), with a shiny rectangle in the middle that feels like breathing. Closer to see, it turned out to be a screen surrounded by LED lights. As the audience stood in front of the screen, it began to light up, revealing a pair of eyes. You should be able to see that. This is a moving image, and after about 10 seconds, the rest of the image slowly emerges. It turned out to be a video portrait of a stranger, the person in the video looking directly at the viewer, and the viewer looking back at the person in the frame. This eye contact occurred for a minute, the screen slowly dimmed, the border of the LED light strip also slowly dimmed. Five seconds later, the screen slowly lights up, playing a picture of the viewer himself. The audience looks at themselves a minute ago for about 30 seconds. Then the screen went off again. Five seconds later the screen lights up again and the voice plays: a message appears: “Would you like to donate part of yourself to the human portrait?” And several options “eyes, nose, ears, hair, mouth, skin color, don’t want to.” Viewers can answer directly by speaking, a process similar to using Apple’s Siri feature. If they wish, a portrait of random people, drawn from the audience and other random viewers, will appear on the screen. If the audience doesn’t want to, a pre-prepared sample is shown on the screen. I hope that in the process of gazing, you can enjoy the ideal and increase your sense of curiosity and positivity towards strangers. Each of us is a random part of this world. Now leave the pavilion by the light.” One side of the wall lights up and a door opens to guide the audience out of the room. At the end of the tour, there are some postcards for sale at the exit, with some randomly composed portraits on them.

 

Process (staff) :

Explain to the new audience that “there will be video and photos during the activity”, and guide the audience’s performance in the activity. The part of the exhibition is completed automatically by CODE. It’s all programmed with a single mirror and a refracting mirror, a monitor, a microphone, a stereo, a computer, a video camera, and a computer-controlled LED light strip. The devices are mounted on a bracket made of metal tubes. The content on the screen is projected by a 45-degree mirror onto a single-sided mirror with the viewer on the front and the camera on the back, and the camera’s line of sight is designed to be near the center of the projected portrait’s eyes to create a direct look experience. This program requires live streaming capabilities to share local videos to another device. You also need the ability to play local footage. In the third part, “Synthesizing Human Portraits”, code needs to have the function of object recognition and capture. Spliced into a random portrait in the background. At the same time, because the interaction with the audience depends on the voice, there should be a simple speech recognition function.