SECOND SKIN
2016
Video installation featuring CGI projection mapping and sculpture.
Throughout our daily lives we are continuously confronted with, and communicating through, imagery. Be it through media or via interaction with social media, there is an intense saturation. However, these images are not real, accurate or truthful, but digitally mass manipulated or entirely simulated, as demonstrated most dramatically in the fashion industry. Images are majorly retouched, with the bodies and figures of the models being completely digitally remoulded and reshaped and, from this, a new non existent digital entity arises. However, research shows that we view, judge and define our perceptions based on these non-existent, unattainable forms. Recent research demonstrates that the public are no longer able to differentiate between computer generated imagery and photography and this, combined with MIT’s development of hyperreal artificial skin which has the ability to dramatically change the user’s features and perceived age, suggests the boundaries between real and the virtual are completely blurred.
I have been exploring the power of CGI to replicate and simulate reality, as well as, future possible hybrid digital/physical aesthetics and realities which could arise from this. Specifically I am interested how this effects the depiction of ourselves, our bodies and our digital avatars/virtual selves.
For Second Skin I developed a new manner of augmented reality utilising complex projection mapping of CGI replicas onto sculpture to create a hybrid virtual/physical experience. This trans-disciplinary process involves the creation of CGI replicas of sculptures which are then projection mapped to the original sculptures. This overlapping of digital and physical elements leads to the audience being completely unable to define where the digital world ends and the physical ones begin, with the projections and the sculptures combining totally.
