Creative works

The Surface

Website
2019

computer graphics installation

In his project Surface, Voranc Kumar deals with the relationship between body and computer graphics. At the intersection of technology and epistemology, he explores the relation between the human body and computer program while replicating skin's visual characteristics (subsurface scattering).

The installation comprises a projection of a rotating sphere, on top of which images of skin are alternating, and a separate display of projection-generating algorithmic activities. As a base for simulation, the algorithm utilizes visual material generated by Google Image Search Engine from which it extracts these images. The search is delimited by keywords such as skin, human skin, skin surface, etc. In this juxtaposition, the situation between image and the concept of the body is not given, but rather produced by means of digital technology.

The skin acts as an interface, simultaneously organic and digital. We can understand digital technology as an inscription, read by either machine or by human. In this, we can recognize the similarity of the digital to the role of the body in the history of science on humans. In case of the development of medical science and clinical practice, the body was formed based on the relation between the inscription and its reading – the surface as a sign and a riddle of diseases and their causes, in case of penal and police practice on the relation between body signs and delinquencies.

Therefore, the body is not a universal form. It is a result of concrete ways of interpretation and extraction of knowledge on the depth of the body based on surface signs, such as medical diagnostics, surveillance techniques and – lastly – also the technology of computer graphics in its mimetic ambition.