This Mirror Shows Your Reflection in…Furry Pompoms
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Thousands of years ago,
our ancient ancestors would look into vessels of still water and see a
low-fi version of the world staring back at them. Human narcissism,
being what it is, inevitably led us to develop more sophisticated forms
of self-gazing. We’d use polished obsidian stone or metals like copper
and silver to catch even just a hazy glimpse of ourselves. It wasn’t
until the 19th century, when German scientist Justus von Liebig
discovered a way to overlay a thin layer of metallic silver onto glass,
that we were introduced to the modern mirror
It’s fair to surmise that as long as humans have possessed
consciousness, we’ve been transfixed by seeing our own image reflected
back at us, in whatever form that might take. “The mirror is a magical
object,” Daniel Rozin says.
Rozin,
a New York–based artist, might be a little biased in his opinion. Since
1999, his work has centered around constructing mechanical mirrors out
of unlikely materials such as wood, plastic, trash, and metal. For his
most recent exhibition, Decent With Modification (now on view at bitforms
gallery in NYC), Rozin built two new mechanical mirrors—one made from
stuffed penguins, another from a hypnotizing array of black and white
pompoms.
Rozin’s mirrors, while not a mirror in the
hang-on-the-back-of-your-door sense, do reflect the humans standing in
front of them. You might not see yourself per se, but you’ll see some
form of yourself reflected in the poms and penguins. As Rozin puts it:
“Hopefully it captures your soul, not your detail.”
The PomPom Mirror, for example, is a pentagon filled with
928 faux-fur puffs. Pairs of pompoms—one black and one white—are
attached to 464 motors that push one pom forward as the other retracts,
giving the mirror its dual-color effect. You could think of each puff as
a pixel in a super low-res camera. “It’s less than an icon on your
computer and it’s in black and white, not in color,” Rozin explains. “In
terms of computation, this is a very, very light task.”
The display is dictated by the images a Kinect camera captures and
feeds into the software Rozin built. Stand in front of the PomPom
Mirror, and you’ll see a blobby outline of your body rendered in pompom
material; wave your hand, and you’ll see that, too. The same goes for
Penguins Mirror: Stand in front of the penguins, and they’ll follow you
as you walk left and right.
It’s easy to classify Rozin’s work as reactive, not interactive,
since the systems he builds are simply responding to an input. But it’s
quite the opposite, he argues. The penguins’ movement prompts you to run
and jump and test the boundaries of what the stuffed animals will react
to. The poms, on the other hand, require you to move more slowly and
deliberately. “So the question is, who is controlling whom?” asks Rozin.
Are you reacting to the technology, or is the technology reacting to
you? I’d argue it’s a little bit of both. For his part, Rozin views
this ambiguity as the basis for true interactivity. It’s only through a
partnership between the piece and the viewer that you can create a truly
interactive experience.
Maybe we’re making too much out of a bunch of stuffed animals and
pompoms, but Rozin’s question feels particularly relevant today: Does
our everyday technology respond to us, or us to it?
Courtesy: Wired
