Evanescence
2019

An interactive moving-image installation that uses water as a mirror, capturing viewers’ gestures as fleeting traces that vanish instantly and return later as delayed echoes of memory.



Evanescence is an interactive moving image installation that treats water as an unstable mirror. When a viewer stands before the basin, the system translates their bodily movement into a live image that briefly appears and then recedes almost immediately, as if the self can only be registered as a fading afterimage. By withdrawing reflection from its usual stable logic, the work makes perception behave like memory, impossible to hold, prone to erosion, and capable of returning at the wrong moment. In this fragile loop of appearance and disappearance, the piece probes how consciousness and self recognition are shaped by time, mediation, and subtle perceptual dislocation.

The system is built from a water basin and framing structure, a camera, a computer for real time processing and recording, and two projectors. The camera captures the viewer’s movement and the computer processes the feed and outputs two image streams. Stream one is sent to Projector 1 as the present tense reflection with a rapid fade out so the trace dissolves as if absorbed by the water, while the system simultaneously archives short fragments in the background. Stream two is sent to Projector 2, which is triggered when the viewer disappears or leaves the sensing zone, and previously recorded footage returns as a delayed replay, projecting the viewer’s recent past back into the space. Together, these components create a repeating cycle of appearance, dissolution, and re emergence, where the act of looking shifts from self confirmation to witnessing an echo of memory.

Soft:
-Processing

Hard:
-Web Camera
-Projectors

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