For this installation, I wanted to find out if it is possible to be aware of the effects that life experiences, encounters, and expectations have on our physical, mental and emotional being. The final execution consisted of an interactive display where you are presented with your live image, a keyboard, and the instructions “Press any key. Q clears the screen.”
I worked with Andy Mockler to code a program in Processing so that each letter, when pressed, adds a live graphic on top of your image. Out of the 26 letters available to press, there were visual and audio effects, some that changed color every time you toggled them, and some that blended with other effects, leading to thousands of possible combinations.
The objective of this project was to have people symbolically choose the influences for their expectations and reactions in life, whether they are social, personal, medical, factual, or other. By choosing these influences, however, it alters people’s perception of themselves, as shown by how each effect overlaid the live video of the viewer. I had hundreds of unique interactions in the few weeks that the project was displayed, each candidly recorded by the program. Some of the more interesting ones are shown below.
