Body Image Construction Tryptic

This as well as the next post display images from a couple of recent design projects I have completed - this one is called the Body Image Construction Tryptic. The idea is really simple, that a room, a bedroom in this case, is fitted out with cameras that display images of what is going on in the room on a couple of lcd screens mounted on (or in this case in) the wall. It is an extension of the notion of having a mirror in your room so that you can inspect what you look like to other people. Thus, beside your direct reflection are displayed two images of you from other angles.
Foucault speaks in his Of Other Places lecture (pub. 1967) of how a mirror, 'makes this place that I occupy at the moment when I look at myself in the glass at once absolutely real, connected with all the space that surrounds it, and absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived it has to pass through this virtual point which is over there.' He also speaks of the act of 'reconstituting' yourself where you are, the mental act of positioning yourself.
I find it fascinating how the mirror can take you out of yourself to see yourself from another perspective, a perspective that is simultaneously objective and impossible. I also feel that looking in a mirror is interesting because in it you are related to your context in a way you otherwise wouldn't understand.
Besides this, three other points of interest lead to this design. First is the fact that people who suffer from anorexia actually see themselves as fat even when they are painfully thin. Second, I find it fascinating how a person suffering from phantom limb syndrome can ease the pain or itch in their missing appendage by holding a mirror in front of themselves so as to trick their brain into seeing a limb where it is not. Third, I find the ability of actors, dancers and other such performers to be in complete control of how they appear to others to be amazing. The tryptic, which I feel is actually kind of perverse, is designed to increase body awareness and to construct a stable image of self in relation to context.

plan, tryptic at bottom

elevation of tryptic