reconFIGURE is a real-time installation exploring how diverse human bodies are reimagined by computing machines. It explores the belief we place in the accuracy of machine systems and the humor and confusion experienced when these machines fail to create accurate representations of us. The visitors’ frontal image is first captured by a camera, and using machine learning, transformed from a 2D image into an animated 3D avatar. Invoked in the projections on the floor and walls and an unsettling sonic atmosphere, these doppelgängers gradually appear to move like strange creatures in an aquarium, where hidden forces throw them around like rag dolls. As the visitors’ encounter their re-animated selves on the screens, they bear witness to the mutations generated by the machine processes. Thus, through the transformation of bodies by way of increasingly black-boxed AI systems, reconFIGURE probes how we will negotiate the truth between our own image and that image as reimagined by machines.
Credits
Produced by: Immersive Arts Space (ZHdK)
Concept/Artistic Direction: Florian Bruggisser and Chris Salter
Development/Programming: Florian Bruggisser and Chris Elvis Leisi
Sound: Pascal Lund-Jensen
Creative Collaboration: Martin Fröhlich
Producer: Kristina Jungic