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Imaginal Expression - bruised and scabbed dancing virtual flesh machine

Posted on February 20th, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, video, images, biology.

The city of Surrey is not built for pedestrians. From the skytrain I walked 2 km along a wide highway bordered by walled suburban enclaves and strip malls to get to the City of Surrey Art Gallery. I was there to see an installation by by Winnipeg based artist Reva Stone.



This video clip of Imaginal Expression doesn’t really do justice to the exhibition. These still images better depict the scale of things.

From the Artist’s Statement:

When the visitor enters the gallery space, a large, constantly moving “soup” of molecular components is seen projected on the wall. Real time animation based on inverse kinematic physics causes this motion to constantly change with no repetition. As the visitor is sensed in the gallery space some of the components begin to coalesce into a complete molecule that follows themovement of the visitor. This response is initiated by a computer visioning system that was developed aspart of the software. In addition to responding to the movement of a viewer, a molecule also has thecapability to exchange its fleshy covering with another molecule when the motion of more than one viewer brings them into .proximity with each other. When a visitor leaves the space, that molecule will degenerate over time. As a result, the visitor participates in a continuous cycle of generation, mutation and dissolution.

Initially I was alone in the large spare white room where the work is installed. The projection encompassed one full wall - images of thickened oblong twisting forms texture mapped with scaned body bits [skin, bruises, etc] writhed among thin red undulating strands. All the shapes tended to cluster loosely around the centre of the display space, occasionally drifting off on some random trajectory, bending and changing shape as they moved.

Maybe it was that I was there alone, but the interactive element seemed lacking. The continual drift of the shapes on the wall was entrancing in its way but lacked order. I tried moving around to coax the display into some sort of reactivity but to no avail.

Still, the scope of the piece was impressive and the continually shifting mass of shapes was hypnotic in its way.

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