Grad Show 23

Jordan Metz

The Me I've Made For You

My practice considers the ways in which individuals are split between real life and online existence. I find it useful to attend to the spaces in between entities, theories, and technologies. Within these undefined spaces lies the spiritual dimension of media, the everyday magic that makes digital life possible. These 'in-betweens' are the site of transcendence granted by technology.

As an interactive audiovisual installation and a series of sculptures, my thesis project explores the transcendent nature of digital identity through fragmentation and multiplicity. 3D scanning my body allows me to reconfigure my form and stage interactions between myself and the viewer. In my practice, I've learned that things have a certain resistance to being captured, so the transcendence we gain is incomplete and muddled by corruption, distortion and loss.

The Me i've made for you

3D model, Kinect, custom software created in Max/MSP/Jitter, sound, foam, MDF, and paint

86" x 44"

2023

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.

A computer program made in Max/MSP/Jitter.

The Me i've made for you

Computer vision, custom software created in Max/MSP/Jitter
2023

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.

Meshing with myself

Materials vary
Dimensions vary
2023

Meshing with myself is a series of sculptures based on a 3D scan of my body. This 3D scan allowed me to work through ideas about what happens to the body when it becomes a configuration of digital information. I came to think of my body scan as an embodiment of my digital double, subject to the same kind of manipulation. Splitting, duplicating, and distorting my body allows me to stage interactions with myself that would never be possible in the physical realm. These gestures represent a search for restoration amongst a multiplicity of identities existing within data systems.

The fabrication process added another layer of error and loss between media. I used 3D printing to create molds for casting a wide array of materials, including gypsum, porcelain, mycelium, plastic, and aluminum. I also used subtractive methods, embracing the tool marks left by the path of CNC machines.