Biography from Camille Utterback’s official website:

Camille Utterback is an internationally acclaimed artist and pioneer in the field of digital and interactive art. Her works explores the aesthetic and experiential possibilities of linking computational systems to human movement and physicality in visually layered ways. Her work focuses attention on the continued relevance and richness of the body in our increasingly mediated world. To create her projects, Utterback combines various sensing and display technologies with the custom software she writes. Whether expressed in the form of architectural-scale projections, custom LED lighting, or intimate sculptures with embedded LCD screens, Utterback’s work engages participants in a process of embodied discovery as they explore the possibilities and behaviors of her physically engaged systems.

Example of works:

Shifting Time – San Jose (2010)

Shifting Time – San Jose is an interactive video installation that juxtaposes the past and present, where the viewer’s body becomes the interface to navigate between.

Entangled (2015)

Participants interact with imagery projected onto two sides of a set of translucent scrims, which hang in the center of the installation space. Movements in the interaction areas on each side of the scrims cause imagery to appear, move, and disappear on the corresponding side’s projection.

Radiant Cache (2017)

The Radiant Cache series, is a set of works that combine hand fabricated glass elements with projected digital media.

Why Camille Utterback?

I am very fascinated by Camille Utterback’s works because not only are they meaningful and visually appealing, they encourage participation from the viewers’ entire bodies. Many interactive artworks mainly engage the viewers’ eyes and hands, but rarely the entire body. Many viewers are often so fascinated by how their bodies affect the projected digital media, that they become engrossed in interacting with the artworks! No longer are they self-conscious about their body movements, neither are they passively viewing the artworks. I love that these artworks are able to engage the viewers in a fun and humorous manner because it’s definitely not easy to achieve these reactions from viewers.

By engaging the viewers’ entire bodies, Utterback is also able to create a more immersive experience. Viewers will forget that they’re interacting with a piece of artwork, but believe that they have entered the artwork itself.