/ solo project
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programmer,
visual designer
/ links
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teaser
pipeline demonstration
project book
caustics
/ Concept
Narcissus - Is this you is a performative space wherein the user gets to experience the problematic nature of an inquiry about the intimate nature of the machine and the human being.
The action of the machine represents a powerful tool for the formal manipulation of reality, capable to produce narratives that project human desires, dreams and aspirations into the physical world.
The action of the machine produces a dimension of neo-positivism in which the possibility of human intervention on reality is exponentially enlarged by the aid of a neutral agent devoid of its own desires, dreams and aspirations.
The result of this cooperation is a partial impairment of humans' physical limitedness, which can reveal a deeper human nature emerging through the dialogue and the confrontation with the machine.
Narcissus―Is this you [from lat. narcissus, gr. νάρκισσος, der. of νάρκη “sopor”]
1 ― Mythological figure punished for being indifferent towards love: he fell in love with his own image reflected until he died.
2 ― In sexology, a pathological attitude to sexual life, whereby the subject enjoys admiring his own body.
3 ― In psychiatry, a personality disorder that leads those who are affected to exploit other people to achieve their own aims or to magnify themselves.
The viewer approaches a monitor on which he sees his own image projected.
After a rapid procedure allowing a photograph to be saved, a digital reproduction of the user's face is superimposed on the real one. This digital alter ego's facial expression is manipulated in such a way as to display emotions in response to those manifested by the observer.
The asset powering Narcissus is simultaneously deployed in the second part of the installation - Is this you - where the user's face is re-mapped onto the face of the protagonists of a montage of controversial footage, portrayed during sexual intercourse, heinous acts of violence, and deliberate expressions of insanity.
As a symbolic reference - both in decoration and meaning - to the myth of Narcissus, I further designed a generative video to be projected on the monitor, which mimics the effect of caustics on water. The whole is then embedded in a black stone organic structure, recalling a natural spring.
