Outside of My Body — Zoe Cohen

Outside of My Body, Inside the Disco

A video sculpture showing the ephemeral nature of how the mind views the body, and how the space and stimulus around us manifests in our perceptions of self

Process

Outside My Body, Inside the Disco, 2024

Plywood, acrylic paint, portable monitors, Raspberry Pi’s, hand-drawn animations made in Adobe Animate and Procreate.

While the physical form of our body changes relatively gradually and slowly, our minds can change in a moment. Some of these animations show how our surroundings permeate our views of ourselves, we may see ourselves reflected in our breakfasts, in the media, in a glass of wine, the shape of an old fashioned camera. We cannot separate our minds from the stimulus that exists around us.

This piece has been shown at NYC Resistor, NYU’s ITP, and Currents New Media Festival. Below is documentation of the project on display at Currents.

Inspiration

Aesthetically inspired by “zig-zag woman” and “woman sawed in half” magic tricks. I was conceptually inspired by the Mind Body Problem in philosophy.

I used the shape of my own body to explore the ways we dissect our bodies and how our intangible minds mingle with our physical bodies.

After determining the shape and placement of the displays, I mapped the animations to the dimensions of the body frame.

Process

I decided to use 16:10 screens because that was closer to the aspect ratio of an iPad Pro, the screen I used in the original iteration, also because the content of each screen was not well suited for something as extreme as a 16:9. This choice proved to add many complications to the project, as normal media players were not compatible with a 16:10 screen. The only device that would play video on a 16:10 screen was a Raspberry Pi, so I learned how to program my own OS on a Raspberry Pi.