In “Projecting Truth”, I aim to use technology and art as a form of truth-telling. I was inspired by an idea that Professor Ruha Benjamin shared about how popular minimalist design hides complexity, such as the essential but underpaid gig workers who are exploited by companies such as Uber and Lyft.
In this project, I ask: how can we honor complexity, culture, and history in the physical world around us through creative technology? I was also inspired by Professor Camille Utterback’s “Shifting Time” piece that similarly focused on revealing the history of a physical space. My installation pieces use my silhouette, objects around me, found video, and personal video to visualize meaning. I used Touch Designer to create my output imagery, and a projector to place the output in various physical settings.
I created 3 exploratory pieces, expanded on below, to answer the question above: “closeted”, “prayer”, and “labor”.
My artistic exploration started with “closeted” by projecting my own silhouette, drawing on the idea from Glitch Feminism that “the glitch posits: One is not born, but rather becomes, a body”. By starting with my own image, I learned how to exert artistic control over a digital representation of myself, with the knowledge that others’ perceptions of me are usually governed by misogyny and white supremacy. This quote from Glitch Feminism guided my ideation and prototyping: “We refuse to be hewn to the hegemonic line of a binary body . . . We want a new framework, and for this framework, we want new skin. The digital world provides a potential space where this can play out . . . we make new worlds and dare to modify our own” (Russell). By refining the intention and technical skill behind my artistic practice, I have started to learn how to modify my own world.
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I aimed to manifest my own image as “multiple selves” beyond the bounds of my physical body, as Glitch Feminism discussed, by creating a portrait highlighting my queer identity through this projection. The silhouette projected onto a bralette in a closet reimagines the queer closeted experience as a positive one, devoid of fear and performativity, that can be defined and exist beautifully in private. The moving projected silhouette contains video clips showing a rainbow in a blue sky, a growing pink flower, and a queer couple from Raveena’s “Headaches” music video. The clips are synced with Dream Koala’s song “We Can’t Be Friends”.
I then started moving away from redefining my own image and explored how to honor the complexity and cultural meaning of physical objects through a rosary within a larger project called “prayer”. In “prayer”, projections place the viewer in another’s intimate moment. A physical rosary hangs above the headboard, evoking Catholic values of reverence and respect. The projection, however, adds a phantom element to the physical object, creating ghostly waves that destabilize the recognizable outline of the beads. There is a more abstract visual on the rosary to contrast the tradition that rosaries represent, in terms of Catholicism as a whole and the act of praying the rosary itself, with the tenuous relationship I have with religion. Even though the rosary is the only physical object in the piece other than the bed, I want this projection to imply that it is the aspect that I feel the least personal connection to. However, it still has meaning in my life through the way my loved ones value it, so its presence is crucial.
“labor” highlights Stanford’s purposefully ignored history of labor, violence, and white supremacy through service workers’ silhouettes projected on palm trees outside of EVGR, an area that people frequent often. “labor” visualizes the invisibilized labor that supports campus life, placing images of Chinese railroad workers within silhouettes of service workers to acknowledge Stanford’s deep history of exploiting labor. Chinese railroad workers’ labor was the basis of the wealth that Leland Stanford, who didn’t hesitate to share his racist views of these same workers, used to create this institution.
Today, Stanford continues to mistreat workers through manipulative subcontracting practices. Neither of these realities are acknowledged by the university. This work is inspired by the art of Ramiro Gomez, most specifically his piece titled “Cut-Outs”. “Cut-Outs” is an installation of cardboard cut-outs depicting service workers that “make visible the “invisible,” the predominantly Hispanic workforce of affluent areas of Los Angeles”.
