. media culture
art . software

Artificial Smile, it's a happy world, after all

Artificial Smile, Stefan Stubbe, Andreas Schmelas, artificial_smile.jpg The digital representation of reality is technically and conceptually a fake, and this "fake" is more and more what we're used to. The process of reducing in pixels (causing a loss of details), approximating colors (causing a loss of tones) and sounds (causing a loss of frequencies) are definitively creating a distorted (yet enormous) memory archive of the last decade(s). From this perspective, truth is always a negotiation between what our eyes see and what the machine records and stores. So why not intervene in one of the oldest way of representing reality (amateur portraiture), pushing it to the extreme in the "pop" and "automatic" categories?? With Artificial Smile by Stefan Stubbe and Andreas Schmelas every memory is a nice one. Their modified camera is able to turn every portrait into a merry visage, substituting perfect smiling lips for less joyous versions, taken from a consistent database. The result is a seamless "happily ever after" social community artificially shot through a camera with a golden reflecting body. But, unfortunately, that's only technology, not a fairy tale.



email this | + facebook | + twitter | TrackBacks (0)

« links for 2010-03-02 | Main | links for 2010-03-06 »

. Sponsor
Sight and Sound, International Festival art and technology, Eastern Bloc, Montreal, Banniere_neural.jpg

. random from the bookshop









Neural Back Issue Pack, neural_back_issue_bookstore.jpg
pay with:PayPal_63x24.gifVisa_35x24.gif/images/MasterCard_27x182.gif


Neural issues
20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42

For single back issues, please contact us

Back Issues pack
. extra services