‘circling towards a possible present’, interactive portraits, 2017

Circling Towards a Possible Present is a new media installation consisting of three interactive, game-engine driven and on-the-fly rendered figurative portraits. The project sits at the intersection of portraiture, film, theatre and video game traditions. It plays with and subverts the expectation of portraiture & interactive 3d games, while considering the inherent theatrical, filmic and painterly dimensions and expectations of these mediums.

The three individually styled portraits share underlying technology and presentation – iPad controlled interactive 3d characters in a fully 3d environment connected to projectors in a bespoke space.  

This work welcomes one to come in, slow down, and play in the present. These re-imaginings of portraiture pay homage to the legacy of and embrace the perspective of Absurdity. For me, the absurdist perspective implies returning my focus to the elusive and illusive present in order to observe and deal with whats truly in front of me, that is, the all caps subtext of mortality. 

I presented this work as a pop-up store in a shopping mall in the small seaside town of Gibsons, BC. Located in a busy area in front of a Liquor Store, with a Lotto Kiosk in between, the solid plywood storefront was dramatically charred, with the doorway cut into it on a diagonal. The “store” was signified by a cursive neon sign spelling out “circiling towards a possible present”. The ground of the 20 foot by 20 foot room and the small threshold leading to it was lined with crushed rock. When the public moved past the charcoaled facade and entered the projection room, they became very aware of their movements as their footsteps on the rock were amplified by the room itself acting as a rudimentary speaker. Demonstrably, this unusual soundtrack made people more aware, even reverential, of their inhabitation of the space. Each of the three portraits were presented simultaneously on tablets and video projectors, allowing the portraits to be presented as life-size. 

In the age of selfies/facebook/Instagram – this age of unstable, real-time evolving, personal narrative – is portraiture dead? What affect might the ever more retinal, immersive and responsive gaming technology have on portraiture? If “a portrait of a dead person” can always be changing, moving and responsive to a users requests, is it still a portrait? What affect does differing mise-en-scene have on subjects that are approached with the same UI and that move according to the same animation loops? Does mise-en-scene change the possible reading of the subject and their motions? 

Through the three portraits varying presentation, I am attempting to run as quickly and as far as possible away from the 3d game industries bias towards retinal realism and action based first person shooter subject matter. In a paradoxical way, these portraits bring the dead medium of portraiture to life through the gaze and nature of their animate, spatial, 3d dimensional game engine digital sources. However, I am undermining this technological trajectory by choice, design and flaunting of conventions. For example, through the portrait’s subjects themselves; the unwieldy first person point of view; infidelity towards Cartesian space; unfixed narrative; unusual framing; unpredictable loss of first person control recycling & re-contextualizing pre-existing “found” elements, including animations, textures and models; super slow motion loops of movement; inappropriate actions; random and inexplicable events; seemingly nonsense textual buttons that trigger ridiculous movement loops; etc.