artist working in expanded photography & digital media

Shifting Skin, 2013

By Alison Bennett / August 25, 2013 / Bookmark the permalink.

Shifting Skin artworks at Theorizing the Web 2014, photographs by Aaron Thompson

Shifting Skin is an elegant statement on the collapsing boundaries between material and virtual via the connecting metaphor of skin. The uncannily flattened images of human surface were captured using a re-purposed flatbed scanner held directly against the subject’s body. When viewed through an app on a mobile screen, a 3D topography appears to project out of the print, a landscape of peaks and valleys describing the tonal scale within the surface of the subject, the terrain of scars, tattoos, skin tone and texture.

This direct interplay between the physical print and virtual object creates a tangible dynamic to be physically explored by the viewer. Although augmented reality is an internet application, the experience is locative and embodied. The viewer must be physically in front of the trigger image and move in an arc before the print to trace the contours of the 3D virtual object.

Shifting Skin generated international attention when first exhibited at Deakin University Art Gallery in 2013, stemming from a retweet by cyberpunk author William Gibson and a report by Mashable.com that appeared in the Huffington Post. The work has since featured in the Sydney Mardi Gras visual arts program, ABC TV news, and the uber hip Theorizing the Web conference in New York City. Shifting Skin was described as a program highlight at Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery and Wyndham Cultural Centre.

INSTRUCTIONS – ACCESSING THE AUGMENTED REALITY COMPONENT OF SHIFTING SKIN(1)

Bennett, A 2013, Shifting Skin, giclee prints with augmented reality overlay

EXHIBITIONS:

Kingston Arts Centre, Melbourne, 20 Jan – 25 Feb 2017
Cork Film Centre, Ireland, 6 May 2016
Wyndham Cultural Centre, Melbourne, 2 Sep – 3 Nov 2014
Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery, Victoria, 18 Jul – 24 Aug 2014
Theorizing the Web, New York City, Apr 2014
10×8 Gallery, Sydney, 25 Feb – 9 Mar 2014
Deakin University Art Gallery, Melbourne, 24 Jul – 31 Aug 2013

MEDIA HIGHLIGHTS


							
					
					
					Kingston Arts

						
												

					

										Kingston Arts 2017, MIDSUMMA ‘muliebrity & other collaborations’ Alison Bennett

										

								
					
					
					ArtsHub

						
												

					

										Dore, M 2014, ‘Art and architecture plays with reality’, ArtsHub, 7 Nov.

										

								
					
					
					Augmented Reality Art

						
												

					

										Vincs, Bennett, McCormick, Vincent & Hutchinson, 2014, ‘Skin to Skin: Performing Augmented Reality’, in Augmented Reality Art, Springer Series on Cultural Computing, p.161-174.

										

								
					
					
					M/C Journal

						
												

					

										    Bennett, A 2014 ‘Persona’ (GIF cover image), M/C Journal, 25 Jun 2014

“The editors [Kim Barbour, P. David Marshall, Christopher Moore] would like to thank Alison Bennett for creating an original gif for the cover image of this issue. More of Bennett’s work, including her augmented reality images of tattoos from the internationally acclaimed exhibition Shifting Skin, can be found at her website alisonbennett.net.”

										

								
					
					
					RealTime

						
												

					

										Priest, G 2014, ‘In Profile: Alison  Bennett, Shifting Skin’, RealTime

“For the viewer it’s this moment of border crossing that is most exhilarating, but as the technology becomes increasingly utilised for commercial means  […], the initial thrill may begin to normalise. Then it will be the content that becomes most important and artists like Bennett will hopefully lead the way, bending reality in ever more conceptually challenging ways.”

										

								
					
					
					Australia Council Experimental Arts

						
												

					

										Experimental Arts 2014, ‘Shifting Skin: the art of augmented reality tattoos’, Australia Council Experimental Arts, Twitter, 27 Feb.

										

								
					
					
					artsHub

						
												

					

										Fairly, G 2014, ‘Skin comes alive as tattoos rise as 3D landscapes’, artsHub, 25 Feb.

										

								
					
					
					ABC TV News

						
												

					

										ABC TV News report, ‘Skin Deep Body Art’, 25 Feb 2014

										

								
					
					
					ABC News online

						
												

					

										Collins, A 2014, Tattooed technology exhibit gets under the skin as part of Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras visual arts festival’, ABC News online, 27 Feb

“… Bennett explores ideas around augmented reality and the collapsing boundaries between the physical and digital worlds.”

										

								
					
					
					AR[t]

						
												

					

										Bennett, A 2013, ‘Shifting Skin’, AR[t]4, Netherlands, 19 Nov

“Watching visitors to the Shifting Skin exhibition as they contorted and danced in an arc before the exhibition prints highlighted the implications of augmented reality for the embodied viewer.”

										

								
					
					
					Huffington Post

						
												

					

										Huffington Post video, 5 Oct 2013

										

								
					
					
					International viral media coverage of Shifting Skin

						
												

					

										Following a retweet by science fiction author William Gibson and a video report on Mashable.com, Shifting Skin received viral media coverage.

										

								
					
					
					Mashable

						
												

					

										Prakash, N 2013, ‘Augmented Reality Brings Tattoos to Life’, Mashable.com, 19 Aug.

										

								
					
					
					William Gibson

						
												

					

										retweet by science fiction author William Gibson, 25 Jul 2013 @GreatDismal photographic prints overlaid with augmented reality inspired by Spook Country http://t.co/iqbrDVOwOx pic.twitter.com/LlWbRBRn0q — Alison Bennett (@bennett_alison) July 25, 2013