Exposed (2019) is the exploration and interrogation of one's own body while being under the surveillance of an audience. The viewer is asked to lay down face up and trace their own body. They are then recorded with a DSLR camera that is connected to a live feed and projected on to a wall.
I have become an essentialist in my life. The most essential thing in our lived being our own bodies. We are psychologically obsessed with ourselves whether that is in a positive way or a negative way something I took from Laura Mulvey's essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema as she explores ideas of Lacan and Freud to define phallocentric politics in film. The directions were explicitly written on the white board for the first viewer, as people lie down on the white board they are wiped away. I bring inspiration from Richard Serra whose work was notable for being interactive, but in a very dictative manner in being direct with the viewer about how to interact with the work. The directions disappeared, but a precedence was set for the following viewers and even without the directions one can assume what need be done.
What is left at the end is a body on the white board. This body lacks gender, personality, age, race, and ability. It is the embodiment of the post-identity utopian society we only read about or project into movies. It is the essentials, a body.
Outside of the exploration of identity is a broader more current exploration of surveillance.
I gained this idea from looking at the works of Rafael Lozan-Hemmer and his work with people interacting in one space being one work, but the other work being the projection of those people playing in that space for a different viewer. In current political arenas this is a hot topic and it's something that many people are thinking about and building up anxieties over.
I gained this idea from looking at the works of Rafael Lozan-Hemmer and his work with people interacting in one space being one work, but the other work being the projection of those people playing in that space for a different viewer. In current political arenas this is a hot topic and it's something that many people are thinking about and building up anxieties over.
"Spectrums" is the current title for my project. The point is to force the spectator to explore the spectrums of gender and sexuality and get outside of the idea of definitive binaries. I want to have a camera (or three) tethered to a live feed that will be projected through MadMapper that will project onto a vertical "spectrum" that is defined by videos and shades of gray.
The purpose is to challenge the viewer into recognizing that everyone exists on a spectrum and that the world is not so black and white, but many shades of gray.
Material List
DSLR Camera
Tripod
Projector
Plywood
Paint (6 shades White to Black)
TimeLine
April 16: Supplies Gathered
April 18 to 20: Paint and Gather Videos
April 25 to 30: Practice Projections (lots of Practice and TroubleShooting)
May 2: Installation
Project Post Update #1
Change of Plans.
There will be an 8' x 4' white board that the participant will lay down on and be asked to trace themselves. There will be a camera tethered to a stop motion tripod so it can be angled downward facing the participant. The projection is then projected on to a surface that the participant can't see.
The purpose is the interrogation of the body, but also the vulnerability they're exposed to via surveillance.
Project Post Update #2
We have the gigantic white board and we've practiced the set up with the exception of the Live feed. I set up the white board with a stop motion tripod and the DSLR camera and took measurements so I'd have an idea of the measurements and dimensions for the day of.
Project Post #3
Today we practiced the Live Feed and I'm glad we did. Apparently to get that to work in MadMapper you need the most oddly specific software called Syphon Live Feed. Erica and I damn near killed ourselves trying to figure it out. However, we did! Now we are ready for installation.