“In a world that is really upside down, the true is a moment of the false.”
Blow-Up is an installation that acts as an extension of the user's mind, a projection of one's memory onto images from the media, it is a digital augmentation of the human-brain capabilities. This prototype uses EEG to measure the spectator's attention level to images of violence in the Middle East. I have personally been exposed to such images of conflict and violence both in real-time and through daily media and I have come to realize that all these images as I think about them today, are one large blurred image that has almost no more impact on me. Using the Flickr API, images are loaded under a specific tag "violent media beirut". The loaded images are programmed to compress quality and grow in size whenever the focus level is below the line of self-awareness. Images would deform and morph according to the user’s level of attention. The outgoing images from the installation go back to the digital world with a cognitive imprint of different users; therefor redefining the realm of the image by submersing a ‘defined’ human state into it. By the end of a cycle, the affected images captured by the program are uploaded in real-time to a glog where they can be accessed publicly and projected in real-time as part of the installation.
violent media images, beirut, lebanon
installation diagram