POWER STRANGERS
2021
Barbara Jazbec, Kristina Tica
POWER STRANGERS is an interactive real-time video and audio installation. It consists of a web camera, projector and a water tank filled with reactive slime. It is based on custom-made face detection algorithm. When approaching the installation, the spectator’s face is being traced by a live camera feed. The data received from the camera is being processed and projected inside the tank, only when the spectator turns away from the installation - therefore, they are never able to see the projection of their face.
Lurking behind the spectator, there is an image of them disconnected from the self, yet dependent on it - becoming their ghost.
Contemporary ghosts live in the digital data and they generate the power of the automated surveillance systems. Extracting the disembodied - virtual presence from its real life experience, introduces the idea of being haunted by your own ghost - your own digital data. In context of hauntology and retro-futurism, it aims to present current state of commodification towards global surveillance capitalism. Referencing a pop-culture phenomenon that marks the 90’s generations, whose youth seems to be the last one to grasp pre-internet or pre-social media times, the aim of this project is to suggest what comes as a phenomenon of the post-internet world. In this world, the ghosts that exist do not come from a haunted house, they come from our own digital traces.
We are all strangers whose ghosts roam around in the world of data, and we generate the power of that world. The more we learn about power that we have to shape this world, the better rangers for the future we are.
Photo credits:
Barbara Jazbec, Kevin Blackistone, Kristina Tica
