Open Garden - Digital Mirror
An interactive lighting design
Skills used
Open Garden: Digital Mirror
An interactive lighting design that reflects multiple images of its viewer in the repurposed screens of smartphones. Alluding to the concept of the ‘selfie’, the design transcends the basic functionality of both a light and a mirror and speaks to the ever-expanding role of technology in shaping the way individuals view themselves.
The hero image for Open Garden - Digital Mirror None Engineered from 32 LCD screens sourced from consumer waste, the work displays the viewer’s reflection in real-time across all of its individual panels. Programmed with facial recognition, the work functions like the camera in a smartphone to track human faces.
Featured as part of Hardiman and Royce’s larger work Open Garden, the design references the term ‘walled garden’ and speaks to the closed system that prevents a digital device’s owner from adapting, reconditioning and recycling its parts and technology for their own purposes – a strategy which is considered a significant impediment to the recycling of electronic devices. Open Garden: Digital Mirror belongs to a collection of contemporary art and design works for the NGV Triennial centred around the theme of illumination and is a part of the NGV's permanent collection.
