Art project by Rebecca Lieberman creates 3D portraits of people using photogrammetry software and live video feeds from the Periscope app:
I began by spending a lot of time on Periscope, watching people’s live streams and noticing some patterns about the ways people portray themselves on this kind of platform. I started to take notice of a strange tension between performativity and intimacy; during a livestream, people let you into these incredibly intimate (and often banal) moments in their lives — getting ready for work, putting on makeup, watching tv with their spouse — in this incredibly performative way, broadcasting their lives to a mostly invisible audience. (As a viewer on Periscope, you can talk to the person streaming via chat if their chat is enabled, but there is no verbal communication).
I also found myself interested in the ephemerality of these streams, their precarious “liveness.” You see into people’s lives for a brief moment, and then they’re gone. I had the idea to try and somehow capture or preserve these moments, these windows into people, by making 3D portraits using Periscope video streams as the basis for photogrammetry.
The project is a student submission for the Computational Portraiture class of NYU ITP this year.
