In theory, it's cool: Take seven artists, team them up with students and professors from MIT's famed Media Lab, and have them collaborate on a series of portraits that reflect how differently a person can be depicted in the digital age.
Too bad the execution of this intriguing idea -- an exhibition dubbed "ID/Entity: Portraits in the 21st Century," running until Jan. 15, 2002, in New York City -- is such a mess.
"Science and technology are radically transforming both the medium and the subject matter of portraiture," reads the exhibition's program. "Capturing the 'essence' of a person through portraiture is no longer limited to a defined external appearance: we can create portraits from sources ranging from one's spending history to the proteins in one's DNA."
True enough. But the nine installations of ID/Entity never get so adventurous in their representations. Instead, they rely much more on conventional means, like images, sounds and biographical words, for their portraits. Often, it's only for limited effect.
The show's entrance is a small, dark antechamber. "You know this voice anywhere," commands an echoing voice as piercing sonic washes pan across the room. This is ID/Entity's first installation, entitled, remarkably enough, "This Voice Anywhere." It's supposed to be a "sonic portrait," the brochure says.
This room opens to another installation, a blue-lit gallery filled with life-sized silhouettes, each with a one-inch-square video screen. There's a cutout of a dog. Its screen flashes an image of its owner, followed by the phrases, "Say info," "Say friend," "Say toy." The silhouette to the left has a video clip of a dog.
"These are really demos of portraiture projects. The call (for ID/Entity) proposals went out in middle March. That's a very quick turnaround," said Christina Yang, curator for the show at The Kitchen, an artists' collective and performance space wedged between the art gallery neighborhood of Chelsea and Manhattan's meatpacking district.
All the works in the exhibition are original commissions, Yang said, created for an MIT conference on the nature of identity that was held in October.
"Telephone Story," a collaboration between the artist J.D. Beltran and the MIT professor Joe Paradiso, is one of the most advanced of these "demos." A 3-by-5-foot video screen depicts a bookshelf holding two small art dolls, a faded black-and-white picture of a man bowling, an eight ball and a gray laptop.
"Please knock on something that piques your interest," a sign to the right of the screen invites spectators.
Knocking triggers a series of answering machine messages that create a sketch of the missing subject. Knock on the dolls, and there are pleas from men looking for dates. Knock on the eight ball, and friends are trying to console the artist over the loss of her father.
Four ceramic contact microphones -- like the ones used in cell phones -- are glued to the corners of "Telephone Story's" screen. Knocking on the glass sends out "bending waves, like ripples on a pond, at 300-500 meters per second," Paradiso said. A digital signal processor measures the time the waves take to reach the four microphones. The differences in time tell where the viewer knocked. And, in turn, what series of answering machine messages to run.
"The viewer's presence, movement and voice can become a part of the portrait, and even engage and entice the portrait into a response," said the exhibition's director, MIT professor Judith Donath.
"But," she added, "if the portrait is too interactive, or if the interaction isn't used skillfully, it feels like you've created a mannequin."
That's precisely the effect produced in "Portrait of Cati," an image of a dirty blonde on a 5-by-7-inch video screen. Electric field sensors detect where the viewer is relative to the picture, and make subtle changes to the portrait based on the viewer's location. The girl gulps when the viewer moves to the left or right of the screen, and puffs up her cheeks when the viewer moves in for a close look.
"Security by Julia XXXXIII" also attempts interaction by putting a surveillance-style camera in a dime-store photo booth, and then showing the results to the outside world on television monitors.
The best looking of the installations, "Alternative Autobiographies," mostly avoids the interactive trap. It takes a corner of the gallery and recreates critic Richard Kostelanetz's New York City apartment, all in white. In the apartment's "fireplace" is an orange glow slowly swallowing entries from an autobiographical timeline: "1965: I fall in love with another Fullbright," "1970: I write the initial draft," in yellow and blue.
To the left, on a desk, also all white, sits an ancient, black typewriter.
A spotlight illuminates the machine, which holds a legal-sized leaf of paper. References to Eliot, Pound and Auden in 72-point type are projected on the page. Synopses of books and records scroll by the right of the typewriter. A garbled pile of projected words spills out of a mock inkwell on the left. Billie Holiday croons "As Time Goes By" through speakers overhead.
Not even the PC positioned a yard to the left, with the invitation to e-mail Kostelanetz, can spoil the serenity of the scene.
