The Looking Glass Self

Mugwumpin Company Member Ray Oppenheimer on the development of The Looking Glass Self

One of the things that I am interested in is the democratization of technology, lowering the barrier for the creation of high quality digital falsehood. As a tool to explore this loss of autonomy and ease of creation we decided to experiment with creating digital puppets from 3d scans.  To do this we used:

Hardware

•       Xbox 360 Kinect
•       An adaptor cable to connect the Kinect to USB
•       A computer with a Nvidia GTX 1060 graphics card

Software

•       Skanect https://skanect.occipital.com/
•       Meshmixer http://www.meshmixer.com/
•       Mixamo https://www.mixamo.com/#/

Another thing I am interested in is the documentation of the creation of this piece through the use of binaural audio to make you feel like you’re sitting in the space with us while we’re working.  Here is a recording of Wolfgang Wachalovsky and Natalie Greene responding to the digital puppeting of company member Soren Santos. (HINT: listen to the following recording using headphones to feel like you are in our rehearsal room)

From my perspective this was an interesting demo of a tool set that I think shines a light on the information we give up freely and the unknown implications of who obtains that information.  Intention and a few hours more work is the only thing standing between a Thriller dancing Soren and low resolution security footage of a crime committing Sorren.

Interesting. 

And scary.

Combustible 2019 with Artists-in-Residence, Mugwumpin, opens Sep 12-14 & 19-21, 2019. Get tickets: counterpulse.org/combustible2019.