Research Question:
How can communication technology be used to create illusion of intimacy?
Supporting Questions: How can space be “collapsed”? How can you turn distance into an illusion? How do illusions help us and hurt us? At what point to illusions turn to harm?When is the point illusions become real? Why do we crave illusions? What makes domestic objects intimate? How can we create technology to be intimate?
Outline
It seems as if families and loved ones are required to live farther and farther away from one another. Whether it be for jobs or immigration, distance is difficult to manage in relationships. Technology has made it easier to keep in touch with facetime and skype but the person on the other end of the line still feels far away when they’re framed in a laptop or phone. Holograms have a long way to go before tech is advanced enough to have full body hologram calls but with a combination of pepper’s ghost trick and the magic mirror concept, the illusion is possible.
By disguising tech behind domestic imagery, it allows people to forget about the mechanics of how they are talking to someone miles away and fall into the illusion that they are present in the space. This is achieved by a two way mirror film on the front side of a sheet of plexi-glass and a rear projection film of the backside. A live feed of a person lit up in front of a dark background will be projected on the rear projection film so only the figure will shine through to the front. The front side with the mirror film will reflect the space and the projected figure will be super imposed onto the reflection so it appears the figure is in the room but only exists in the mirror. Callers must immerse themselves in the illusion to experience the sensation of “collapsed space”.
Magic mirror test: plexiglass with 2 way mirror film against monitor. To avoid needing a giant flat screen TV for a monitor for the scale I need, I turned to the idea of projecting an image on rear projection screen film.
Narcissus is a greek myth about a young man who falls in love with his own reflection. When he realizes his love is only his own reflection, he becomes so heartbroken that he commits suicide. He discovers his illusion could never become real and his despair leads to his own death. The myth is supposed to be about the dangers of self-obsession but for me the allure and loss of illusion is poignant to me.
Anna Huff 