You took my impression without ever touching me

installation and 15 minute shadow play performance

steel, celtic cloth, plastic, lights

2022

Video clips viewable below; Full Documentation of ICA SD Performance Here

This is a panorama of impressions, asking how our desire for expression and entertainment drives participation in the extractive datafication of ourselves and our communities. Impressions made by casting my friend’s faces are overlaid with the impression of a human generated by StyleGAN2, a machine learning algorithm. In a 15 minute shadow play, performers use lights to project the faces onto the curtain. As the lights animate the faces, we hear a conversation between a person and their clone exploring bot, puppet and shadow accounts.

Images 1-5 document the work within a black box theatre, images 6-10 show the work installed as an interactive installation at the ICA San Diego (image credit to Phillip Scholz Rittermann)

Images below include the program for the performance and performance stills.