Gaia's girlfriends 2010

The second round of Gaia's girlfriends

Self Portrait

I am a photographer for more than 30 years and the last time I did a self-portrait was when I was in photography school. No one like to have their picture taken. It is a tough process of being aware of yourself, what you look like and how you are perceived. You really want to control the outcome, but you really can't. No wonder I only take other people pictures. Unfortunately didn't figure out how to do a moving portrait of myself.

Mother and Daughter portrait

Another mixed portrait - stills and video of a mother and a daughter.

Gaia's girlfriends series.

I have started a series of Gaia's girlfriends. This is part one of the series where I document a group of girlfriends over the years capturing the unique dynamics and energies of such friendship.

This was intended to be an interactive work, but after working on the piece I realized that the best would be to live it as a never ending loop. The thing that I noticed watching the stills and the videos is that they have their own big world between them and there is no way for an outsider to get in. I also decided that the stills in this case have almost the same weight as the moving portrait, so this work is a combination of stills and a video that tries to give us, the outsiders a glimpse to their "secret society" dynamics.

Gaia's Portrait in ars electronica

Gaia's portrait was displayed as part of the MIT Media Lab retrospective. Unfortunately it was poorly constructed and therefore changed the way people interacted with the work, but still I was proud to see it there.

In my talks about interactive installations I emphasize how critical it is do think about every aspect of the installation. Not just the content or technology, but also presentation, location, lighting, venue, other things around the installation that might effect it. Every little detail that might affect the viewer, from the second they see the work, through interaction, to the moment they leave can set their expectation and take them to a different experience.

In this case, the picture frame was mounted to the screen in a way that created a gap between the display and the frame, so people were intuitively sending their hands to that gap. The display is a touch screen, so when they touched it the cursor jumped to their finger and they thought that was the interaction and were waiting for something to happen. Fortunately most times there were Ars people around that demonstrated how to interact with it, most of the time. If it was built the way it should, behind a fake wall that makes it look like a hanged picture on a wall it would make people just stand in front of the picture, like they do in museums and then the interaction would work as it should.

One might say that when you label a work as interactive, it is setting a problematic expectation in the first place, as people want to interact. They are actively looking for the interacting part. Then again if we don't label it and people see it's a TV screen they expect a video. This is an excellent example to the challenges interactive and digital artists face designing their works. I don't have solutions but I am aware to the challenge and keep exploring the different possibilities to lead my viewers through the path of experience I want them to follow.

Proud mama

Well this is not exactly about interactive art, but I have started working with my 7 year old daughter on observations. Observation is the basics of a good artist. To notice the details, to recognize in the details those that "make" the characteristics of the art piece, drawing or a photograph. I have to say I was amazed to see the results.

Here are 3 drawings she made of herself, her brother and her room. I am very proud.

Shy picture by Narinda Reeders & David MacLeod

Came across this video when I was hunting for interesting interactive art examples for a lecture I am making.
For some reason in all my research in the past, the Australian side of the world is harder to discover. (it is the second time I find a fellow portraitist from Australia that shares my views). I think this work is interesting, somewhat direct, but constructed wonderfully. I love the photographic aesthetics. It is one of the only interactive works I have came across that deal with the same aesthetics and concepts I am constantly thinking of. Will be interesting to start a dialog with these guys.

Shy Picture