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Zeugen is an interactive and immersive new media creative electronics artwork that uses 32 human cast robotic faces and a face tracking system to explore the concepts of seeing and being seen.
Zeugen is also German meaning witness or witnessing.
I move past 32 faces and their eyes follow me (witnessing). I question who owns the ‘visual’ experience in this gallery space. What is the spectacle and 'who' is the spectator? Do we passively witness or are we also witnesses of ourselves by the act of witnessing? A power
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struggle is revealed causing tension between the witnessing and the witnessed.
I see reflections in the penetrating acrylic eyes; a reflection of myself as a viewer. I find the sensation of ‘vision’ to be moving in both directions simultaneously between the viewer and the viewed.
“Many classical writers (including Euclid and Claudius Ptolemy) conceived of this in terms of rays emanating from the eye, so that vision could be understood as . . . touch” (Yellott 2004). I force contemplation of immersive interactions between viewers on both sides of the plane of engagement.
The witnesses have no mouths yet share their testimony through a ‘randomized’ ambient soundtrack. With this play on visual and audio ‘recording’ I signify more than ‘represent’ testimony as the sounds form no singular narrative but all narratives combined, building slowly to an imminent end.
Photos courtesy of Krista Jahnke |
