Adrian Goya: Faces
Artist(s):
Title:
- Faces
Exhibition:
Creation Year:
- 2007
Category:
Artist Statement:
FACES is an interactive video installation that explores the otherness contained in each one of us. The Other, so often an anonymous and distant being, is carried inside me in a way. Differences between humans are merely a product of chance. Too easily, we distance ourselves from the suffering of people, ignoring the tragedies of mankind, ears deaf to the pain of the Other. We forget that the sufferers could be “us” or someone we know, someone with a face. Levinas said that being in a face-to-face relationship with the Other makes it impossible to kill him. He also considered that his relationship with the Other as neighbor gave meaning to his relations with all the others. A neighbor relationship requires one to know the Other’s face. Every day, we look in a mirror and it’s always the same face, the “Self.” This installation tries to briefly change that everyday experience. When looking into the mirror, the viewer discovers other faces watching him, faces that get mixed-up between them and the viewer’s reflected image. The Self encounters itself face-to-face with the Other, previously a stranger. Inside the viewer’s own reflected image lies a small, ever-changing sample of the Infinite Otherness.
Technical Information:
Motion detection registers the viewer looking into the mirror and records a small loop that is maintained in a database. As viewers watch their reflections in the mirror, their own images are video-projected over his reflection with similar dimensions and with a small delay. As viewers move around in front of the mirror, previously recorded loops are projected inside their reflections. The projected video loops are contained inside the reflected mirror-image by a series of masks. With a series of motion blurs and masks, the viewers’ movements determine the discovery of new faces. FACES was entirely programmed in Pd & GEM. Completion of this project was made possible by the Centro Multimedia, Centro Nacional de las Artes, México DF, México.
