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Project
< The BirdMan >
2005-2006
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Personal
trauma and dream sequences gave birth to the 'BirdMan'
character. The 'BirdMan' installation, set up to resemble
a natural history exhibit, represents my desire to communicate
and share my fascination with this hybridized creature.
In the work, I explore possibilities for human beings
to overcome human limitations of perception due to physical
and psychological reasons. This work is inspired by the
Buddhist epistemological idea that the 'Self' is not different
from the 'Other', as well as Gilles Deleuze's ideas on
memory that our relationship with time will always be
elusive and imperfect.
When I walked along the street at Times Square in New
York City in 2004, I saw a dead pigeon flattened on the
road by a car accident. The bird's wing was torn. This
reminded me of a forgotten memory, my trauma. When I was
younger, about 6 or 7, I had a severe fear of birds. One
day, I had met a wounded bird in a dead alley, but I could
not help it. It was a very strange emotional shock for
me. I felt both fear and guilt because I could not help
the bird and I suffered more because I did my best to
understand but still did not know why I felt guilt and
fear of birds. Had the bird passed away with spite toward
me?
Years
later, as an adult, I dreamed of a monster with a bird
head and a wing on only one side. In the middle of talking
with it, my head became its penis. This bird spoke to
me in bird language and I learned its language.
The reconstructed skeleton of the BirdMan has a human
head and a bird head. What does it see? Birds, highly
visual creatures, can recognize 200 frames per second,
and some birds have multi-foveae, while humans have only
one. The fovea is a small depression in the retina of
the eye where visual acuity is highest. Birds have a wider
rage of sight than humans. How does 'BirdMan's brain synthesize
two kinds of perception?
Imagining a perceptual mixture of a human and a bird eye,
I made an emulator to approximate Birdman's method of
seeing. The machine eye, mimicking the characteristics
of a bird eye and a human eye, moves vertically and horizontally
and takes the role of an interface selecting and playing
one of the recorded video clips about BirdMan's memory.
I expect to realize 'Digital Autopoiesis (auto-creation)'
representing both real-time perception and stored memory
simultaneously.
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TECHNICAL
The BirdMan Eye-Perception Emulator is composed of two
real-time video cameras, four servo-motors, a PIC micro-controller
and MaxMSP/Jitter software. Video cameras capture the
audience and send the real-time video through Firewire
cable to MaxMSP/Jitter in a computer. Tracking the movement
of the audience, Jitter sends two X-Y values of the audience's
central position to the micro-controller. The PIC micro-controller
controls the servo-motors and makes the camera move horizontally
and vertically according to the audience's movement.
The video image of the surveillance camera on the servo-motors
is sent to Jitter again and, after that, the composite
moving images, composed of recorded video clips about
BirdMan's memories and real-time captured video images,
are played and 'jump-cut' like human memory with time
delay and repetition. In addition, the skeleton of BirdMan
will be installed in a context of the natural history
museum.
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1/2 |
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