Digital Facial Image

Posted by admin on February 4th, 2007 filed in theory

The Interstitial Space Helmet (ISH) by Auger-Loizeau

Auger-Loizeau

I originally came across the work of James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau via wmmna.

The helmet makes use of local cctv on two screens. It displays the wearer’s face on a small screen on the helmet’s exterior, the outisde world is presented to the wearer on a screen housed inside the helmet. The helmet has a number of added features such as allowing the wearer to view their own face within the privacy of their own helmet, and downloading any image to be used as an avatar when you’re not feeling, or wanting to be, yourself. The wearer also has the option of mirroring their own face within the helmet (the wearer’s face displayed on the wearer’s screen), providing imaginary reassurance for the individual or a narcissistic fix in the form of observing one’s own face in the company of none other than your very own self.

What strikes me about this piece is that it highlights precisely a distance between the head and the face. The ISH provides something like a cross section or assembly diagram, showing the joining of the face to the head like a mask being fixed in place. The head has been set back from the face and in doing so the identity of the subject wearing the ISH is left free to wander. The face becomes nothing more than an avatar (giving the user the option of discarding their own face in favour of that of George Michael for example) an autonomous expression of identity. This identity is, however, constrained by the physical presence of a body. The avatar as an online and anonymous identity often lets loose the dark side of desire and experimentation, allowing the individual to enact any number of fantasies or play out roles normally excluded, repressed or left to speculation. The minimal distancing of imaginary identity and physical presence in the case of the ISH keeps such fantasmatic autonomy moored to an immediate reality, whether or not we know the actual identity of the wearer. It is perhaps this point that is a key factor in the uncanny appearance of the figure hidden by the ISH. Far from diffusing the potential for a fierce and uncertain expression of desire, such hidden figures are also susceptible to such outbursts. It is perhaps more interesting to consider whether the appearance of a digital identity takes as much from the wearer as from the viewers ability to fix the immediate symbolic identity of this figure; in submitting yourself to the (even localised) diffusion of the self-image performance is drawn out, the identity, or lack their of is performed and explored.

The distance between head and face points to that which is obscured by facial expression, the mass of flesh that is the body itself, intensive rather than expressive, non-signifying. The unnerving quality of the work seems to lie in a combination of two things: the faceless, expressionless head which leaves us nothing to identify with. The head is left exposed as the face moves away from its grounding in the body. This is unnerving in a similar fashion to the scene from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in which Joel’s dream world falls apart and the faces of the Lacuna inc. employees appear to be melting leaving nothing but a bear, featureless head. This gap, between the face and head, mimics the framing which goes on in identification, the subtraction which makes easy the recognition of a particular object or individual. The face functions as a framing of the fleshy real; the details of the body and the head as a whole, which exceed what we are able to perceive and make sense of, are reduced into a coherent frame of meaning. This framing is, however, easily diverted through the use of a further avatar, the ability (offered by the ISH) to present a face that is not your own and in this action autonomising identity, calling up identities from a near endless network of digital avatars and images. It is in this option of fictionalizing, of extending the fantasy further beyond that of immediate symbolic and interpersonal identification that the ISH goes beyond standard symbolic framing, that it extends the expression of identity out towards an increasingly expansive network of digital imaging and information exchange.

This uncanniness is doubled with the sense that whilst we can see the wearers face displayed on the screen, mounted on the outside of the helmet, the image itself is one of the inside, of a proximity capable of engendering a claustrophobic feel on the part of both the wearer and the viewer. This intimate image of the wearer is at the same time an uncomfortable one bringing to mind the paranoia that surrounds extensive surveillance, the feeling that we are always being watched, a sense that is intensified in the low resolution image common to reality tv’s cctv footage. This adds to the sense that the face presented on the screen is a fictitious one, that we, the viewers of this outside screen could easily be lured into falsely identifying with the wearer via their avatar. The most strikingly affective and uncanny quality of the work is in the presence of a body, this is not just a digital image or avatar; this feeling emerges from the unknown that lies beneath the ISH (or any head ware that obscures the individual beneath), the ultimate fear that this plays upon is that their is no person underneath, no face with which to identify but a featureless, impersonal and monstrous head.

Any helmet narrows vision, creates a heightened awareness of breathing patterns, body temperature and so on by encapsulating the wearer. This narrowing, the intensified self-awareness is reduced further in this instance. Such a restrictive environment heightens awareness of a localised material existence; it makes all the more obvious the world around you through restricting vision, isolating and in doing so highlighting the blind spot in sight. The wearer of the helmet stands both inside and outside of the picture which is constituted by their presence and presented on the outer screen, yet this holistic image is susceptible to the blind spot which marks the wearer/viewers inclusion in this very image. This reflexive twist, the individual who is both inside and outside of their own image, marks the wearers blind spot, their inability to see or experience everything around them, asserting the primacy of a material existence through flatly denying a transcendent vision in which the viewer sees all that there is. Perhaps I’m getting a little carried away here, but is this not part of the claustrophobic anxiety that comes with being sealed off, becoming all too aware that you cannot see all that there is around you, that you are somehow vulnerable and simultaneously increasingly aware of your own intensive existence?

Should the facial image be abandoned in favour of any number of abstract digital images, a screen saver for the face out of action, the impact of the piece would perhaps diminish. This impact is achieved through the familiarity of the images used, the comfortable distance offered by avatars as an expression of an ideal self image. The interest is created in the localised distribution of the facial image, it’s digitisation which in real-time interaction creates a more immediate and more intriguing confrontation with the digital and the potential for infinite transformation that the translation of the face into a digital facial image (DFI) presents. This is, however, to be distinguished from the polite DFI which is found in Mark Hansen’s writing. Rather than an affirmative source of affective exchange, enabling a fully anthropomorphized interface to digital information, the facial images presented by the ISH asks questions, poses challenges and critique, rather than merely elevating and strengthening the human/users normative positioning. It encourages a questioning of the coherence and stability of identity, not only with regard to the digital avatar but also with regards to immediate, person to person interaction and the construction of identity through linguistic and facial expression. The DFI presented by the ISH marks a diffusion of the facial image within the invisible realm of the digital in itself; it is a mere apparition, representation and nothing more. It actively investigates the gaps within digital representation and the construction of identity, and at the same time as that within direct interpersonal exchange and the symbolic efficacy that sees the face as an invisible interface of signification, conflating meaning with matter of fact. Where as for Hansen the DFI proposes a humanized interface to the digital, maintaining both the position of the user and the tool or machine, the ISH asks what is lost, changed, manipulated but also, what was actually there in the first place? The way in which the ISH brings together daily interpersonal, symbolic interaction and the extended digital fantasy maintains the tension which gives this piece much of its intrigue.