About

Artists

Alon Chitayat

Alon Chitayat (Israel – US) is a digital artist and founder of Animishmish Creative Studio , which explores the intersection of video and interactivity. His artistic work has been exhibited at international venues, including “ARS Electronica Festival” (2010) , “Siggraph Festival” (2011). Alon is currently pursuing his graduate studies at the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), NYU. His research concentrates on the study of drawing as a means for interaction.

Rosalie Yu

Rosalie Yu is a designer, maker, creative coder and visual artist. She is currently pursuing a Masters in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. Her work spans multiple artistic platforms that include interactive installation, live performance and projection design. With a background in psychology and art, she is interested in incorporating storytelling and narratives to bridge lives with emerging technology.

Process

Concept

Skin Deep is a series of collaborative self-portraits that treat the body as a canvas for 3D drawing. It is an exploration of a new form of collaborative drawing where the audience is invited to take part in the intimate process of creating the artists’ self-portrait.

The artists are 3D-scanned, producing a mesh of their bodies and texture maps of their skin from all angles. Participants are invited to color the textures on paper which are then reassembled back to the 3D model, creating a final portrait which is defined by both the observer and the artists.

Skin deep is exploring the core value of oneself after peeling away layers of consciousness and revealing vulnerability, and how this transformation provides a new way of seeing.

Process

We generated 3D scan of our bodies that includes these two aspects: the mesh(form) and the texture (the skin). The mesh doesn’t change, but we can draw on the texture and project it back to our mesh.

We listened to each others’ past memories while coloring the other person’s textures, and realized that as the stories go deeper, the relationship between skin, body and the vulnerable, hidden self underneath starts to surface. This piece opened a door for us into a new form of art making, and we hope that it can sway viewers to value their tenderness and truly accept who they really are.

Body Mesh

Skin Texture

Pre-rendered

We found the Element 3D plug-in allows us to use videos as skin textures in AfterEffects. This opened up the possibility of projecting stop motion videos back onto our body mesh. Unique effects were created using mediums such as pencil, charcoal, ink, water color, pastel, and acrylic to apply mixing, washing, and dripping techniques.

Interactive:

In order to invite audiences to collaborate with our portraits, we use JavaScript with 3JS obj loader library to make an interactive site. The site uses a webcam to capture print-out textures that are secured with a pegbar on a table, which allows us to see live feedback of what people draw on the paper.

Space Setup