“Under scan” is an interactive piece which uses a tracking system to produce an audio/visual on a person’s shadow, as lone strangers walk in an open, lighted space.

By doing so, it projects a clip of a stranger, who is making some type of movements with his body and face – as if to entertain the the person who sees it. I particularly liked the way projection screen is customized to the stranger’s whereabouts, with the help of tracking system that predicts where the person will move next. It makes it highly interactive and gives an extra personal touch to it. I think the use of lights to create formation of shadows on sidewalk is a smart move Lozano has made, in order to detect movement of person and produce that interaction.

The use of the small projections, unlike that of the fully large scaled ones that draws a lot of blinding LED lights, this interaction seems to give off a different type of response. It seems more mellow, personal, more deliberate way of drawing someone’s attention without being intrusive. It seems like the content of the interaction is meant to invoke a certain type of humor in the stranger, with due respect to his/ her personal space – as seen in the way the clip fades off after stranger walks away. In the bigger picture, Lozano’s interaction “Under scan” is meant to be highly interactive, with proper accustomization to a person’s whereabouts – with due respect to his/her level of interest in it.

As mentioned previously, the use of small projection instead of large scaled ones could be possible form of work. But I guess in relation to what was mentioned in the article, it is practical as well to project interactions in small sizes to reduce costs especially if it is a artist working on this project, and not a big corporation with a lot of budget.

virtuality as a digitally facilitated, purely cerebral state independant of the vicissitudes of the body.

And in his book “Mind Children” American roboticist Hans Moravec speculates that in
the future people will no longer need bodies as human consciousness will be fully transferred to digital realms.

The quotes above seem to suggest how the use of the virtual reality, such as the internet plays around our perceptions, our psychology, our way of thinking and manipulation of the individual’s minds. It seems like a very futuristic way of describing virtuality, but I guess it really holds true. We do not use any part of our body when it comes to using virtual reality, or the Internet for examples, and it is highly “independant” because we are detached from our body parts. The digital spaces is simply functional because there is a collective number of brains working alone / together to produce whatever information that we may need/want/desire from the anything digitally produced.

In my opinion, the way it says “human consciousness will be fully transferred to digital realms” seems to point   towards our transition from the physical world to virtual reality. And even if it is becoming a worldwide phenomenon in mayn developed high speed Internet places like here (Singapore), it does mean that living in the physical space “in the moment” woud require someone who is conscious enough to go back to the non-virtual reality. And that, I would assume would need to be deliberate.

In conclusion, I hope that this theory holds true, because in some ways it does end off with the idea that we could still connect on a virtual level regardless of any preconceived notions, stereotypes about a person. Instead, internet communities thrive on a similar human-like approach where we thrive to reach towards a common goal through a different , alternative reality.