Permanent Visibility (2021)
Featuring: Shawn Tamaribuchi, Savannah Knoop, Sewar Abunuwar and Nica Ross. Music by Geo Wyex
A virtual reality based essay that celebrates the failure of surveillance and nonhuman vision when applied to the human form. The work is the result of capturing gender non-conforming bodies practicing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in Carnegie Mellon’s Panoptic Dome - a sensor-free motion capture studio. As the name implies the technology's intention is to fully capture and render the "truth" of a body's performance. Throughout the piece Jeremy Bentham's musings on the perfection of the Panopticon's form are juxtaposed against the Dome's raw data. We see the noisy shadows of bodies moving across the Dome's walls, digital skeletons popping in and out of sight as their movements shift outside of a machine's understanding and we are left with the impression of their contact recorded in millions of point clouds. Bentham's words describe an omnipotent yet focused power harnessed by surveillance while queer bodies jump in and out of understanding in pursuit of joy rather than legibility.
Performers:
Shawn Tamaribuchi
Savannah Knoop
Sewar Abunuwar
Nica Ross
Music by:
Geo Wyex
Panoptic Capture by:
Hanbyul Joo
Programmers:
Oren Shoham
Char Stiles
Sylvie Sherman
With support from:
Signal Culture
Tool Maker in Residence
&
The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University
&
Fund for Research and Creativity of the College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University
Captured in The Panoptic Studio at Carnegie Mellon University
Principal Researchers:
Hanbyul Joo, Hao Liu, Lei Tan, Lin Gui, Bart Nabbe,
Iain Matthews, Takeo Kanade, Shohei Nobuhara, and Yaser Sheikh