Taking an Art-making Break

…for some much-needed art-seeing.

I visited several of the fifteen galleries all located in the Minnesota Street Project building in San Francisco. Work by the Mexican artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is featured at the Bitforms Gallery's EXCUSE YOU! exhibit here. Here I am standing in his Bilateral Time Slicer.

His explanation of how it works:

"A biometric tracking system finds an individual's axis of symmetry using facial-detection software. When the axis is found, the computer splits the live camera image into two slices, to be

displayed in a vertical orientation. With each new participant, time slices are recorded, then pushed aside. When no one is viewing the artwork, the slices close in and rejoin, creating a procession of past recordings. The piece is inspired by time-lapse sculptures and masks found in ancient traditions—Aztec three-faced mask, the avatars of Vishnu, for example—and modern and contemporary art—Duchamp, Balla, Minujín, Schatz, and Kanemaki, among others. Like in the tradition of the Aztec three-faced mask, the central strip corresponds to the younger, most recent portrait, whereas the farthest ones on the sides represents the oldest portrait."

The thought just occurred to me, though, that this is a computerized version of a funhouse mirror.