multivision.goggles
current working definition of uncanny: the uncanny represents the valley between empirically true experience and our perceptions of life. when the space between incoming sensory input and our interpretation and reaction of it is hacked, the result is a perception shift that can cause danger to the perciever.
description: my goal was to create a pair of goggles with lenses of varying focal lengths on each end. each eye is therefore confronted with a minimum of three possible viewpoints. some of these lenses might be useable, some might not. for each eye i used one medium range, one nearsighted, and one farsighted lens.
ingredients:
castoff optical lenses of varying focal lengths
two 3-way plumbers pipe joints
thick 1" circular plastic tubing
thin flexible plastic tubing
drill, box cutter, hot glue gun
process: i cut the thick piping into 6 small pieces of varying lengths, fit them into the plumbers' joints, and attached the pipe to the joint and the lenses to the pipe with the hot glue gun.
i drilled holes into the single holed end of the plumbers' joint and attached plastic piping with hardware to create the headpiece. the goggles were painful to wear and intensely disorienting.
results: making a physical object was very satisfying for me. however, ultimately, the uncanny seems to me to involve some kind of trick or hack when we are not aware of it, and if there's one thing you're aware of with these goggles, it's that you're wearing them. they are heavy, painful, and odious to wear.
i did feel the perception hack worked well and raised valuble questions about the "trustability" of our bodies in perception, discerning safety and delivering correct information to our brain for us to act upon. anytime one is at arm's length from the source of a signal, there is a possibility for the message to be intercepted or incorrectly interpreted.