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When I think of cyborgs, an image of a person with a mechanical limb or two, something way into the future where we have advanced technology. However, I never though of us as cyborgs with the tech we have now. The cyborgs I imagine have super abilities, like keen hearing or sight. But then again, the tech we have now allows us to do just that. It allows us to sense so much more, and the information it feeds us can alter the way we perceive the world around us. It can make you feel things that are not there.

In the reading, it mentions and talks about Opera for a Small Room, an installation created by the artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, who use tech to immerse their audience in the mechanical theatrics that tells a story of a man called R. Dennehy. However, the technology used serve to deceive the audience; it manipulates their senses into seeing things, to fill in gaps where they think should be filled. This gap would be Dennehy himself, who is not on set, but is perceived to be through recordings of his voice and shadows that mimic his silhouette. His narrations and every other prop meticulously put together on set each played a huge role in manipulating the audience’s experience. It was to an extent that they themselves feel as though the memories of Dennehy were their own. They were able to capture the presence of a body without one physically present in the room.

This power that technology holds in manipulating our senses, it is not exclusive to electronic devices. Something as simple as a book can do the same. As a speaker plays sounds that can cause us to imagine things, so can text of a story in a book; it is all up to how we process the information given. The text from the reading that described Opera for a Small Room was enough to make me imagine hearing and picturing the installation, so much so that I just had  to do some research and look it up to see if what I imagined was correct (I found a video documentation and it was amazing and better than I expected).

Overall, I do agree that technology can have great control over our perceptions over what is actually happening in reality. And yes, it can be dangerous, but there is so much more it has to offer that makes it worth the risk exploring.

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1. Tilt Brush

Art can be created using various means, such as painting and sculpting. Likewise, in this interactive media project, participants are able to express their creativity through painting, only this time, it’s in a virtual space. They are not bound to working on a two dimensional surface; the room becomes their canvas. Every stroke of a brush is captured in real time, and since it takes place in the physical space as well, participants are also able to walk through their three dimensional creations.

 

2. Xbox BIG SHADOW Interactive Wall

In order to have a shadow, there needs to be light, and , of course, an object to cast the shadow. However, what happens if a huge shadow is just projected on the wall and tries to crush your shadow beneath its feet? Would the logical thinky-thinky parts of our brain help us understand that it is but a projection? Or would our instinct overrule all logic and proceed to make us go into full defense mode to survive the phantom foot? Evidently from the view above, the second option wins.

As suggested in the title, this project uses the projection of shadows onto walls to create an interactive space where virtual and physical spaces meet, allowing the audience to use their shadows to interact with a virtual shadow. Although the object/subject casting the big shadow is non-existent, the participants view the actions and instinctively react to them (e.g: when they’re about to be “stepped on”).