Take A Selfie, Watch Your Face Melt

July 27, 2018 by Dave Haynes

Hat Tip – Digital Signage Connection

This is an interesting mash-up of mobile, signage, mechanics and art, put together for an exhibit at the National Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw.

As part of the TEEN AGE exhibition, the art piece – called hash2ash – uses a display that prompts viewers to take a selfie on their phones, which is then rendered as digital particles on large 1×1 metre screen (looks like short-throw projection to me). Almost immediately, the black and white selfie starts to fall apart and dissolve downwards. A mechanical set-up is synced with the digital piece and releases black gravel to a mound of the stuff below the screen.

The installation touches on selfie culture, and the fear/reality that digital files that record our lives can be lost, leaving people with “nothing but the blank memories of our past. Even the data on ourselves will eventually fade away…”

The piece was developed by a Warsaw company called panGenerator.

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