2016

Throughout our daily lives we are continuously confronted with imagery, however, these images are not real or truthful, but digitally mass manipulated or entirely simulated. Images are majorly retouched, with the bodies and figures of the models being completely digitally remoulded and reshaped and, from this, a new non existent digital entity arises. However, research shows that we judge and define our perceptions based on these non-existent, unattainable forms. Research demonstrates that the public are no longer able to differentiate between computer generated imagery and photography and this, combined with MIT’s development of hyperreal artificial skin which has the ability to dramatically change the user’s features, suggests the boundaries between real and the virtual are completely blurred. How does this effect the perception and depiction of our bodies, both online and offline, and what future body aesthetics or post human developments could arise from this?

Second Skin responds to this, utilising complex projection mapping of CGI replicas onto sculpture to create a hybrid virtual/physical experience. This overlapping of digital and physical elements leads to the audience being unable to define where the digital world ends and the physical one begins. Hyperreal projected digital skin shifts and slides, combining with the sculptures and transitioning into a new hybrid aesthetic.   Alongside the projection piece, is an accompanying single channel video displaying the power of CGI to simulate but also its fluidity.

Second Skin has been exhibited in London, Berlin and Norwich, alongside this, I delivered a talk and sceening of the work at Cambridge University, as part of Cambridge's Festival of Ideas 2016. Second Skin was most recently shortlisted for the Zealous Digital Art EMERGE prize, as well as received a Vice Chancellors Post Graduate Commendation when first displayed for my MA show.

Photography by Benjamin Beuachamp