still human
2021-Project, Device
By attaching cameras to arbitrary points on the physical body and viewing the feed through a Head-Mounted Display (HMD), the user’s "eyes" are displaced to entirely different anatomical locations.
The body that emerges from this experience deconstructs the behaviors embedded by society, attempting a light-footed escape from the construct of the "normal human." In this sense, still human is a practice of "rebirth." It is an act of "re-doing" the linear process of human development—from the gastrulation of the embryo and the determination of the body’s axes to birth, the learning of bipedal locomotion, and the internalizing of social norms. By retracing these steps, the work materializes and allows one to viscerally experience the latent possibilities of what the body could have been.
This visceral sensation is the joy of being thrust into an entirely new Umwelt (self-centered world) and being toyed with by unfamiliar stimuli.
Furthermore, as these "reborn" bodies confront the inconveniences of the physical world, the urban environment around us is relativized—revealed as a civilization constructed solely by and for "humans with eyes in their heads."
