Listening Heads

Listening Heads, 2006 - Interactive video portraiture.

In the film shoot for Listening Heads, Kentaro directed his friends to act as characters which he thought would represent the nature of his friends. For example one of the friends was instructed to act as a stockbroker in Manhattan. The character was chosen to bring him/her-ness in body language and expression. According the character's nature, a number of scenario was created. For example stockbroker on cocaine is trying to pretend he is straight. Then these facial expressions of various scenarios were captured at a photography studio on HD video.

In the interactive video installation, the software responds to sound through the microphone, and talking to the microphone would trigger these different facial expressions, created from this scenario based portrait shoot, at random.

The facial expression (response) that is triggered by the viewer's voice (word/sentence) would make sense as a response for most of the time. Viewers were left to interpret the facial expressions in ways which suited for whatever they said.
This complete disconnections of two communication scenarios, one at the studio and one at the installation site, brings attention to absurd nature of language and communication, and context in which art works exist.

Special Thanks to Lee Bergman, Luke Duncalfe, Holly Shepherd, Tu Rapana, Katrin Hagen, Daniel Munn, and Lisa Taylor


Essay by Jaenine Parkinson
http://window.auckland.ac.nz/archive/2006/06/onsite.php

Exhibitions

Window gallery, Auckland, New Zealand July 2006
Cloudland: Digital Art from Aotearoa New Zealand - Substation, ISEA Singapore, July 2008

Links

http://www.isea2008singapore.org/exhibitions/pe_cloudland.html