Contemporary art culture has apparently moved on from examining the suspicion of Big Brother, and has seemingly accepted his longtime metaphorical presence by toying with it. Zoom Pavilion, which opened June 13 at Art Basel, is the brainchild of Montréal-based artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Polish-American artist Krzysztof Wodiczko.
The conceptual art installation takes footage of the exhibition’s audience captured by 12 computerized surveillance cameras, and renders it onto gallery walls in real time.
With the help of programmer Stephan Schulz, head of research and development at Lozano-Hemmer’s studio, Zoom Pavilion is more than the mere projection of faces using a series of non-discreet cameras. Schulz created a program for the exhibition that utilizes facial recognition to detect and record the spacial proximity of visitors between one another, mapping and recording the distances between individuals in the room and using a series of algorithms to decipher whether that distance is “suspicious” before displaying.
Robotic cameras zoom in on attendees, amplifying the images up to 35x magnification, ranging back and forth between easily recognizable landscape images of the audience to cropped close-ups.
Zoom Pavilion challenges typical gallery experiences by using optical amplification and tracking to project the attending public back onto itself. The exhibition stands as a curious cross examination of realities exerted in George Orwell’s 1984 and the rise of self-admiration culture fueled by vehicles such as selfies and reality TV.
This article was written by Kimberly B. Johnson from PSFK and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.
