The Influencers at the MACBA

Last Friday I went with a few of the students to a presentation that was part of The Influencers, a cultural/art festival/conference at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (or MACBA). We saw a demonstration and talk about the Image Fulgurator. An invention by Julius Von Bismarck, a German artist. The Image Fulgurator is a machine that projects images on to other images when a flash from another camera is detected. So, if I'm taking a photo of say the Eiffel Tower and Mr. Von Bismarck is hanging out with his Image Fulgurator, which looks like a camera, when my flash goes off it sets off the Fulgurator, which is loaded with an image, perhaps the Google logo. I don't see the image being projected, but when I look at my photo of the Eiffel Tower, I see the Google logo plastered across the French landmark. The best "mission" that he carried out was at Tiananman Square in China. He went there with his Fulgurator, loaded with the image of a dove, and projected his image on the famous portrait of Mao that hangs in the Square. It seemed like a very tense mission since the portrait is heavily guarded and is not allowed to be photographed for any reason, other than by tourists. The tourists snapping photos looked totally confused and a bit stunned, and Mr. Von Bismarck managed to not get arrested. The mission was a success! I kept thinking that this guy needs more publicity so people will know about the work he's doing, but then he wouldn't be able to continue his work because everyone would know his game. Overall it was a really cool presentation, and got everyone thinking about the power of this sort of machine, particularly in the area of advertising. The artist does not want it to be used for this purpose, for obvious reasons, so he is working on obtaining an international patent. The Mad Men would be crazy for this machine!

He also talked about a program that can read people's emotions just by scanning their face. He did an experiment in Berlin where he posted a camera that recorded everyone who walked by during a certain time period. Then the emotions of this section of the city were reflected on a smiley face projected on a building (or maybe a screen on the side of a building, I'm not sure). So, big brother really is watching and registering who is anxious, who is sad, and the sliver of the population who is happy. So, check out this guy's website. And support interesting, relevant art!