click for sound
Shallow
2019
Interactive installation
Audio sensor, projector, video (looped), translucent mylar film
Shallow is a sound reactive installation.
When viewers open the door, they’ll come to encounter a veil of translucent film that seals the entrance. The sounds brought and inconsequentially caused by the viewer makes a hazy figure to appear on screen from its own side. Yet the figure fails to stay, as the image fades away into silence with our sound, leaving us a trance of doubt -- was it the image of me or else?
While the instinct to interact exists on one side of the screen, ambiguity lingers in the attempt to the mutual confirmation of self.
The figure tries to see, touch, and hear what’s on the other side.
- Development & Process -
What is image? What is my image? What is the relationship between me and my image? Inspired by works of Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Lacan, Gary Hill, and John Jesurun, I designed the installation as an accidental encounter that slightly blurs the authenticity of reality, as my investigation on the way we perceive self and others through our own image.
The door without an entrance is inspired by Sartre’s metaphor for magical realism; by changing the path of anticipation, the gaze that goes in a single direction to the world ceases in between and returns to oneself with doubts.
➝
In the early version, the projection screen was set up away from the door; the viewers need to go through the door and a short corridor to touch the screen. From feedbacks, I found the physical distance and narrow space render a strong feeling of isolation, and the dark corridor recalls a sense of horror, which distracts from my focus on the illusive self-mirroring through contact.
sketch of the final version
The translucent film serves to retain the visual sense of a real figure, and the translucency brings about an illusive tangibility and intimate distance.
Projection light not only serves my intention to create an deceptive illusion, but also echoes the idea of projecting one’s image onto others.
Sound as the trigger of light creates a connection between the image and the viewer by calling both of them forward. A mutual dynamic of subject and object underlies this simultaneity that resembles a mirror, while the uncanniness renders the installation like a lure.
reflective film
transluscent film
Still from the projection
Installing from behind the screen
View from behind the translucent screen
All rights reserved © 2016 - 2020 Yingzi (Vesper) Guo