My two years of infrared investigation were rendered obsolete with the arrival of the Kinect. And I think that’s ok, because this toy is so much more fun. The games I have tried are really lame, but hacking into its data streams opens up new ways to do interactivity.
So we are entering a stage of technological artistic development where the object easily can engage in a cybernetic relationship with the observer. This feedback process opens up a series of real possibilities, in contrast to the optical illusions from the history of painting.
REMASTERPIECES is an attempt to add something to painting in the 21th century. Using Kinect to set up a space where the spectator (usually a reflexive figure standing still) is turned into an actor. With a broad range of small programs we dissect the body of painting and recreate it as vulgar entertainment.
From scribbling cave walls to aid our hunting, illustrating the lives of our saints, discovering the properties of space and perspective, creating tools that copy reality into images, to the breakdown of the exterior and the outer manifestations of inner life…the time has come to reanimate the figure of the distant bourgeois observer.
What would happen if we treated a painting as a game and decoded its message into a playful one?
Hacking a PS3 and Kinect together for the ultimate FrankenConsole™
neo-norwegian experiments in art and technology 