Auto Emotion

Rafael Lozano-Hommer’s Eye Contact (2006), is a wonderful example of interacting with the viewer and stimulating the viewers own auto emotion. Initially the piece seems nothing more than a flat screen television, with small pixel squares filled with colours. However, it is with great excitement that one discovers that the image of ones one body is captured on the screen, causing one to play in front of the screen, waving and jumping, with out considering the commotion one is causing in the gallery space. The interaction with the screen brings a childlike emotion, which develops into a happy glee, when you realize that not only do you have the power to change the image, but you have the power to awaken hundreds of little people who are living in bachelor apartments with in the television.
It is the start of new relationships, and the viewer hunts the little people, picking and awakening who they desire to make contact with. The viewer is in total control of these beings, and a feeling of empowerment joins the glee and excitement. Each figure reacts differently upon being woken, each provokes a different emotion on the viewer, If a figure takes too long to wake up, then the viewer is frustrated, if the figure dances then the viewer receives the satisfaction in the performance and may choose to continue the interaction.

Gradually the viewer passes the glee and surprise stage and gets bored of interacting with little apartment dwellers. A new emotion takes hold, that of how is this done, and (as in my case) may choose to read the plaques describing the technique used in the piece. This holds the word “Surveillance”, which suddenly brings forth a new reaction to the once lovable television, the concept that the viewer is just like one of the little figures with in, someone being watched by others, unknowingly. The small surveillance eye, on the top of the television, starts to be sinister and unnerving. As on realizes the impact that surveillance has on personal space and privacy.One can image being a member of the little people apartment complex, living in a designated space, possibly never meeting the bodies around you. Each little space seems to be the private space of the dweller, a place where the dweller can wake up and act in any fashion that suits them, and then return to sleep. They believe they have the control of their own lives and the neighbors cannot see them, and therefore not judge their actions. They can be as silly as they like in that space. Just like any other apartment or subdivision in any place on any cotenant.
The realization that this personal privacy and independence is only a concept and actually each little dweller is being watched and manipulated into wake fullness and then left behind to sleep, brings one to question the privacy and independence each of us really has. Are we controlled by a job, would we choose to wake up at that appointed time, or have we been manipulated into doing so. Has the media and society brainwashed us into behaving in a certain manner, or have we used our own emotions to make our decisions and guide our movements. And most of all, who is watching us, wake up? When we check our phone messages, boot up and go on-line, when are we really in privacy?
Rafael Lozano-Hommers interactive Eye Contact was a wonderful addition to the Auto Emotion exhibit, as if brought the viewer to consider emotion and movement on a gamete of levels.