For every good selfie you take, there are dozens of duds that you'd rather didn't see the light of day, but the fastest way to get over those insecurities might be to project those selfies onto a giant head for all to see. Accepting your own face and flaws, and how you present yourself to the world, was the impetus for a public art installation called As We Are, by Matthew Mohr Studios.
Standing 14 ft (4.3 m) tall, Mohr's sculpture is made up of ribbons of ultra-bright screens, comprising 850,000 LED lights which come together to form a three-dimensional human head. Visitors to the installation step into a photo booth in the back and have their portrait taken by 29 cameras at once. Those images are then stitched together into a 3D model of their face and displayed on the giant head outside, warts and all.
Tucked away inside the head are its "brains," which can store 100,000 portraits on-site and even more in the cloud. The sculpture is expected to stay in situ for between seven and 10 years, and those images are set to rotate across the head the whole time, with special care given to equally represent people of different ethnicities.
The project is designed to explore how people understand themselves, and what kind of "self" they present to the world – largely through social media and documenting their own existence. Magnifying the face is supposed to be confronting but also empowering, giving every visitor a taste of the power dynamic of having a statue "made" of them, which is a privilege normally reserved for the powerful and heroic.
If you're feeling adventurous, As We Are is on display now in the Columbus Convention Center Atrium in Columbus, Ohio.
Source: Matthew Mohr Studios
