From The First Sight
2019
multimedia installation
Pergola, Italy
Technologies became inseparable from human life. Different gadgets with screens surround us and inevitably affect our behaviour and interaction with others. By having only a smartphone with internet access we feel connected, we feel like part of the whole world like a big family. Let’s say you have a video call from a friend. Usually, at the same time as the other’s person video translation, you’ve got a video of yourself somewhere in a corner. This image is pretty seductive to us, it attracts maybe more attention than a person you are talking to. You move your head side to side, back and forth and then that’s it, you look good, and you are satisfied. The surface of a digital screen is like a reflection on the water with which mythological Narcissus fell in love.
But the interaction itself fails to happen because, in fact, we are thinking more of how «the other» perceives us and not really involved in the conversation. On the other side, we can’t interact even with our own image because it requires eye contact. The front camera is situated on a side of the axis of the view which makes it impossible to make eye contact with yourself. The eyes are running away, hiding somewhere on a side. This metaphoric fracture gives us the opportunity to take a look at our own faces from an unusual perspective. I can see movements of my eyeball, contemplating my face like a landscape without recognising it. The encounter is not happening, the screen controls it.
In the process of interaction with the installation, people were taking pictures of themselves. Some of them were even taking selfies with the smartphones and ipads used in the artwork.
