Model Card Now Live, Project Explained
'Modelcards' has its roots in a project I worked on a project in
Fabrica (http://www.fabrica.it) for an exhibition at the museum of the
moving image in new York (http://www.motmi.com) called DARE
(http://www.fabrica.it/dare). I created two pieces for this
exhibition, GRID and FACE. FACE allowed visitors to grab a snapshot of
themselves and be added to the end of a sequence that showed everyone
who had gone before. The images formed the artwork and people used
this tool to create narrative sequences, dance moves and comedic
gestures. When I moved to SHOW we took FACE and placed it into the
front window at Liberty's department store which allowed 24 access and
also recorded the images in portrait (http://www.showstudio.com/projects/libertys).
‘Modelcards' takes the simple, automated sequence from FACE but
replaces the single snapshot with a 45 second video. A model steps
into the booth and presses a button to begin. They must then check
their appearance and position on camera. Once satisfied they can begin
the recording in which they are prompted by a spoken voice to answer
questions about their physical statistics. When the video has finished
recording the model is then free to go and the videos are automatically
uploaded to our site. Stylists and photographers are then able to view
the models over the internet within minutes of them being recorded.
While still retaining the basic information of a standard card the
short video allows the model to convey some of their personality and
attitude.
It's a project that's been kicking around on my computer for a while so
it will be interesting for me to see it running and watch how people
interact with it. Paul Bruty, our chief designer, has built a great
housing for it which makes it much more pleasurable to use than sitting
down at my computer. The arcade buttons are particularly sweet. The
main problem we have at the moment is the sound quality as the room is
very badly isolated but it should be sufficient for the first few run
throughs.