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:
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Kingston Arts Centre, Melbourne, 20 Jan – 25 Feb 2017
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Cork Film Centre, Ireland, 6 May 2016
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Wyndham Cultural Centre, Melbourne, 2 Sep – 3 Nov 2014
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Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery, Victoria, 18 Jul – 24 Aug 2014
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Theorizing the Web, New York City, Apr 2014
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10×8 Gallery, Sydney, 25 Feb – 9 Mar 2014
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Deakin University Art Gallery, Melbourne, 24 Jul – 31 Aug 2013
MEDIA HIGHLIGHTS
Kingston Arts 2017, MIDSUMMA ‘muliebrity & other collaborations’ Alison Bennett Dore, M 2014, ‘Art and architecture plays with reality’, ArtsHub, 7 Nov. Vincs, Bennett, McCormick, Vincent & Hutchinson, 2014, ‘Skin to Skin: Performing Augmented Reality’, in Augmented Reality Art, Springer Series on Cultural Computing, p.161-174. Bennett, A 2014 ‘Persona’ (GIF cover image), M/C Journal, 25 Jun 2014 Priest, G 2014, ‘In Profile: Alison Bennett, Shifting Skin’, RealTime Experimental Arts 2014, ‘Shifting Skin: the art of augmented reality tattoos’, Australia Council Experimental Arts, Twitter, 27 Feb. Fairly, G 2014, ‘Skin comes alive as tattoos rise as 3D landscapes’, artsHub, 25 Feb. ABC TV News report, ‘Skin Deep Body Art’, 25 Feb 2014 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, A 2013, ‘Shifting Skin’, AR[t]4, Netherlands, 19 Nov Huffington Post video, 5 Oct 2013 Following a retweet by science fiction author William Gibson and a video report on Mashable.com, Shifting Skin received viral media coverage. Prakash, N 2013, ‘Augmented Reality Brings Tattoos to Life’, Mashable.com, 19 Aug. 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
Kingston Arts
ArtsHub
Augmented Reality Art
M/C Journal
“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
“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
artsHub
ABC TV News
ABC News online
“… Bennett explores ideas around augmented reality and the collapsing boundaries between the physical and digital worlds.”
AR[t]
“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
International viral media coverage of Shifting Skin
Mashable
William Gibson
More media coverage here: https://shiftingskinonline.wordpress.com/