The subject in Constant engages us by staring at the camera, the gaze is fixed and un blinking. The video contains13 subjects and 12987 composit faces generated by the computer. The figure imperceptibly changes race every 40 seconds. Constant was created as part of a New Media Arts residency funded by the Australia Council; for the Arts.

The work came from my interpretation of conversations that I have had with Dr Richard Kemp and Helen Patterson from the Forensic Psychology department at the University of New South Wales.. The aim of the project was to study the problem of wrongful imprisonment, through inaccurate selection of suspects, in a line up environment. Within such situations there is strong pressure on the witness to select a guilty party from the line up. Studies have showed that people tend to be better at distinguishing facial features (identity) from their own race. This makes suspect recognition problematic in crimes where the witness / victim is of a different race to the perpetrator. This pressure for resolution can lead to cases of wrongful imprisonment, particularly in situations where the perpetrator is of a different racial background to that of the victim.

The morphing process provides fluidity in the displaying of potential suspects. By allowing the victim / witness to view computer generated composites of the suspects. It will hopefully provide a situation where a suspect is selected because of positive recognition as opposed to approximation.

Whilst experimenting with initial morphs I became interested in elongating the morphing procedure and creating a transition that was difficult to perceive with the human eye. I wanted to create a situation where the viewer would not know wether the image was static or changing. For me this played with the conventions of portraiture where the viewer becomes the singular figure (the constant), watching an everchanging but seemingly still image.

< | >

VIDEO EXAMPLE BELOW