Dar la cara

Visitors walk into a dark room. On the floor, a projected particle system reacts to their presence, picked up by a webcam stripped of its infrared filter. There is no screen to face and no button to press: the interface is a space to inhabit — Carlos Scolari's "spatial metaphor" — one that does not stand between the participants but pushes them towards each other.

The piece is tied to a donation. A company has pledged a maximum sum to an NGO, and that sum shrinks every time the audience puts the installation to what the group called "bad use": letting the particles pile up behind them instead of pushing them back towards the point where they are born. The rules are explained before anyone walks in; going ahead anyway is each visitor's decision.

Company and NGO are both fictional, built out with their own websites, social accounts and contact details, and a companion web page shows the consequences of what happens in the room in real time. The third thread of the work is exactly that: how little we verify of what reaches us as true.

Dar la cara was the final project of the Diplomatura en Narrativas Transmedia y Tecnologías de la Interactividad (Facultad de Arte, UNICEN) and was shown on 13 and 14 December 2018 as part of "En Tensión | Arte + Tecnología".

The particle field responding to a visitor crossing the room.

Credits

• Group separadoSeEscribeTodoJunto: Rodrigo Cobo, Lara Giarrocco, Francisco Mendes Moas, Sergio Sansosti, Sofía Zamora
• Particle system and computer vision: Processing + OpenCV
• Shown at "En Tensión | Arte + Tecnología", Facultad de Arte, UNICEN, Tandil — 13–14 December 2018

Photos