Reva Stone

Reva Stone is a Canadian digital artist who works with video, robotics, and interactive installations. She focuses on the boundary between human and machine, born and manufactured. More specifically, she looks at that boundary as blurred. I found her work Carnevale 3.0 on the Rhizome site. She explores the idea of machines slowly "weaving themselves into our everyday lives until they are nearly invisible." In this piece, she worked with technicians David Sandeman, Victor Goertzen, Chad Harris, and Richard Dyck. With their help, she created a robot of sorts. It is two hollow outlines of a young girl (a younger version of the artist herself) made with aluminum, on top of a robotic platform that moves throughout the space. Between the aluminum outlines is a small video camera and projector. The robotic figure interacts with the viewer through the gallery space by moving and turning toward them. Randomly, the viewer is captured on the video camera. The images captured "combined and overlaid with previously stored images and projected outward from its metal body through the small video projector." The computer then adds new video to memory or discards the recording.
Carnevale 3.0 builds "a database of lived experience" where the video images captured become "memories" of the event. The work itself blurs the line between technology and human experience. It recreates the experience of memory through video and computer programming. The images overlay, change, and sometimes disappear all together, just as memories do. The figure interacts with other people, just as people do. Most interesting is when the robot is alone it still overlays and projects random images from its database. Even while alone, it is recalling "memories," as a person would. Just in viewing images and reading about the work, I can understand the immediate relation between born and manufactured. Everyone has technology with them at all times nowadays. iPods, computers, and cell phones at the very least can be found on the majority of people you see. Furthermore, people have technology literally implanted into their bodies. Where is the line between natural and artificial? If being human and having a body is part of our individuality, what does it mean to have mechanical devices as part of the body?
I find the work to be incredibly visually interesting while clearly portraying its message. In a time where people almost define themselves by the technology they have it is important to explore these boundaries. The body as a hollow, aluminum outline makes the figure feel cold and almost two-dimensional. It forces the viewer to engage with a possible future where humanity gives way to machinery and individuality is lost.