Zeugen V3 (Mondomatrix creative electronics and robotics, 4' X 8' – 2009)
Zuegen is a good example of both the theoretical sensibilities I bring to my work and the technical skills I utilize. With Zeugen I am combine wood, acrylic, polymer and metal milling practices with machine vision software and creative electronics hardware in a single prototyping process. To build Zeugen I also used body casting, painting and mold making fine art practices. I also used mechatronics robotics practices. I used a wide variety of skills that I have learned throughout the years and combined them to make 32 motion-tracking human cast faces that have moving eyes for watching and tracking patrons' movements in the gallery space.
One of the most successful achievements of the project in terms of theoretically analyzing is that Zeugen achieves a complete embodiment and interactive experience with a viewer without requiring any learned or technological interface. Viewers of the work experience a powerful visceral event and are motivated to interact and play with the work. Zeugen also questions the ‘sense of being stared at’ or the gaze as requiring another person as observer. Larger questions of surveillance as a mediated experience and the social implications of being watched are challenged by Zeugen. Zeugen shows that we do not need another ‘observer’ to feel as though we are being watched.
I am still in the process of uncovering the underlined meanings of Zeugen but even at first glance major research questions are revealed.
