I am invincible...on the screen/ False motion tracking

I am invincible…on the screen/ False motion tracking

2019/2020

2-channel HD video, color, sound

03’13”

This work emerges from the revisiting of the early cinematic portrayal of characters of Chinese descent and the exploration of “deepfake” technology.

The video on the left consists of still images extracted from various Hollywood movies and American TV series produced from the late 1930s to the late 1980s, which centered around the portrayals of people of Chinese descent and the stories associated with Hong Kong. I use an application that has synthetic media technology, mostly known as “Deepfake”, to alter the actors and actresses from the still images and rewrite their lines.

The video next to it shows a character that I perform, named the "Pre-CGI body”. This body refers to those performers who are dressed in a tight suit that has a lot of motion tracking data points attached. They are widely seen in pre-productions of commercials and movies in which their performances and bodies are used as the “material” for post-production where computer graphics or 3D animations are generated on top of their actions, faces, or bodies. Despite that, this “Pre-CGI body” I perform in the video is attached with fake tracking data points which do not function as it suggests. This video was filmed after the one on the left was made. The body is re-enacting what has been created on the screen on the left, and they are not altering the characters on the other screen as it might appear to be from the setting.

This work suggests a continuous paradox and an intertwined dilemma that often takes place in the constitutions of representation, and raises the question of ‘Who actually has the legitimate power of control on the bodies?’