Part of my inspiration for this project lies in Daniel Rozin’s interactive sculptural mirrors, most notably his Wooden Mirror.[1] Built in 1999, the mirror is composed of over eight hundred squares of wood, each attached to a tiny servo motor, and a tiny central lens, through which the mirror obtains the image it displays. The servo-controlled wooden squares are wired to a computer, which individually tips each square of wood up or down so that from the point of view of an observer the wood appears lighter or darker. In concert, each square of the mirror is in essence one pixel in a giant screen, displaying its own segment of the image in front of it. Rozin’s inspiration behind this piece was to explore the dividing line between what is digital and what is physical, juxtaposing a “warm and natural material,” wood, with the “abstract notion” of digital pixels.[2] It is Rozin’s mirror that my project uses as a window for the under-layer of video, albeit in an entirely digital implementation. Rozin’s theme of digital versus physical also varies from my theme of revelation of the artist’s process and intent through the interaction of viewers.
Camille Utterback’s interactive installation pieces were another inspiration for this piece, most notably her “Text Rain” of 1999.[3] Text Rain projected the image of the viewer onto a wall, and added in letters of a poem falling like rain. The letters did not simply fall through the user’s image, but landed there as if the user’s image was solid. Viewers could cup their hands and catch the falling letters; vowels and consonants would collect on the projected heads and shoulders of the audience, spell out the lines of the poem, and fall when the virtual support beneath them vanished. What fascinates me about Utterback’s work is how she engages the user in the making of the art, creating pieces that are dynamic and constantly in flux. While users do not see the work that went in to the final product, they know that they are an integral part of it.
“Written Forms,” another work by Utterback, comes even closer to my own idea and inspiration.[4] Taking live video and mapping it to three layers of text of differing brightness, the work projects onto the screen a dynamic composition both visually and lexically coherent. From a distance, one sees the video image—not entirely realistic, but recognizable; from a closer vantage, individual letters gain distinction, allowing the viewer to read the unique text formed by that instant in time. The three texts refer, in Utterback’s words, to “dark internal spaces, muddled boundary spaces, and external ethereal spaces.”[5] What I find most intriguing about “Written Forms” is the multi-dimensionality of the work: its ability to create meaning on different levels of perception. Again, Utterback uses the viewer to create the art. Moreover, the composition of her art requires that the viewer take a closer look in order to comprehend it fully, as the letters are indistinct from afar. Distance, as Utterback uses it here, is one of the key components of my own piece, although my intended aesthetic differs from hers in both form and method.
[1] See Images: 5.
[2] Rozin, 1999.
[3] See Images: 6.
[4] See Images: 7.
[5] Utterback 2000.
