jordan metz

The Me I’ve Made for You is an interactive audiovisual installation using computer vision and custom software created in Max/MSP Jitter. The work represents the psychological effects of living in the digital age. It imagines a digital double that is always available for interaction, but remains trapped within the infrastructure of technology. The viewer’s movements generate their own experience of the work, luring them to embody a fractured connection with the other that lives within the screen. This relationship paradoxically entices interaction while defying visibility.

The installation consists of a custom frame, embedded screen, and a computer vision system. The program uses infrared depth images from the Xbox 360 Kinect to sense the viewer’s position and proximity in the exhibition space. On the screen, a 3D scan of my body breaks into pieces as the viewer approaches, while sound is synthesized and interpolated as viewers move through defined zones.

The program uses the Kinect to track the viewer’s position in the exhibition space. The audio information generates the pattern in which the 3D model splits apart. As viewer’s move closer, the effects become more dramatic.

The interaction draws on my own experience with social anxiety, both in person and online. I have fear of being watched and concern for how I am perceived by others. At the same time, this visibility is a confirmation of my personhood. Seeing myself doesn’t offer the same kind of recognition. In fact, I get an uneasy feeling when I see myself represented on screen; it takes away from my being here in the present. This project is a kind of exposure therapy for being exposed. If digital identity is ontologically fragmented and flattened by its need to be seen, this project says that once left alone, it can put itself back together again.