So much has changed since 2020, since we were originally going to have this festival. Much of the exhibits in the 2022 festival didn’t exist in 2020 or have transformed. This piece speaks to this transformation, but as a participatory artwork that is built throughout the festival. 

This project will feature a small station where someone can stand and record themselves talking about how they have transformed since 2020. They will see their video be processed by the system and added to a cumulative portrait of abstracted mouths telling one story about transformation. 

These abstracted mouths are created by taking raw video, cropping it, and adding computer vision effects over it. Participants and the audience will see this occur in real time. 

This portrait will be projected on a wall near the video recording station, looping throughout the festival and constantly changing. At the end, there will be a final video portrait generated from The Paseo, as testament to these documented transformations.

About the artist:

Nina Lutz is a Phoenix-born and MIT trained designer, computer scientist, and researcher who uses computational and artistic methods to explore visual communication and culture at scale. Many computer scientists want to make computers think more like people -- Nina wants to use computers to make us think about other people. Nina especially focuses her work on individuals and groups who are not represented in the making, regulating, and evaluation of the technologies and digital communities that affect them. Additionally, Nina is passionate about mentoring underrepresented students in STEAM – as a product of the Arizona public education system, she is thrilled to be back in the Southwest partaking in the Paseo Festival and Educational programming.