Shanghai
Body Lens is an interactive performance exploring the relationship between the human body, digital vision, and mediated perception. The work uses green paint as both a physical material and a technological interface, transforming the performer’s body into a surface where hidden visual information can be revealed.
Within the performance, I participated as the person applying green paint onto the performer’s body before and during the live work. Rather than functioning as a purely preparatory task, this action became part of the conceptual framework of the piece: the painted marks I created directly determined how the performer’s body would interact with the digital system.
Through chroma key technology, the green-painted areas of the body become a live window into another visual layer. As the performer moves, the audience sees the physical body simultaneously exist as a human presence and as a changing portal into a constructed digital environment.
The work investigates how technology can transform the body from an object of representation into an active interface between reality and virtual space.
Traditional digital imaging technologies often treat the body as something to be captured, recorded, or replaced. Green screen techniques typically erase the physical subject in order to insert a new environment.
Body Lens reverses this relationship.
Instead of removing the body from the image, the body becomes the mechanism that reveals another layer of reality. The performer does not disappear into the digital environment; their physical existence becomes the condition that allows the virtual image to appear.
The green paint functions simultaneously as:
The project questions:
When technology changes how a body is perceived, where does the body end and the digital environment begin?
Unlike my other design projects, where I work primarily as a creator who develops systems, visuals, and experiences from an external position, Body Lens required me to participate inside an existing performance structure.
My role was to apply the green paint that enabled the technological transformation of the performer’s body.
This created a different relationship between designer and artwork:
Rather than designing an image from a distance, I contributed a physical action that became embedded within the final experience.
The placement, coverage, and form of the painted areas influenced how the body would later interact with the chroma key system. The marks were not only aesthetic decisions; they became functional components of the digital process.
This experience expanded my understanding of design as not only the creation of objects or interfaces, but also the design of relationships between materials, bodies, technologies, and participants.
The performance combines physical intervention with real-time digital compositing.
The process consists of three stages:
Green paint is applied directly onto specific areas of the performer’s body. These painted surfaces become visual signals that can be detected by the camera system.
Through chroma key technology, the system identifies the green-painted areas and replaces them with alternative visual content.
Unlike traditional green screen production, where an entire background is removed, the selective application of green paint allows only parts of the body to transform.
As the performer moves, the audience experiences a constantly changing relationship between:
Physical movement → Digital transformation → Audience perception
The body becomes an interface where invisible computational processes become visible through human movement.
Participating in Body Lens challenged my understanding of the designer’s role.
In many design practices, the designer is positioned as the person who creates, controls, and delivers an experience. However, this performance introduced another possibility: the designer can also become a participant within the system, where their actions are not separate from the work but become one of the conditions that allow the work to exist.
This perspective connects to my broader interest in interactive and generative systems. As technology increasingly participates in creative processes, the boundary between creator, tool, and participant becomes less defined.
Body Lens became an early exploration of this relationship — asking not only how we design experiences, but also how our actions become part of the systems we create.
MORE REHERSAL & BEHIND SCENE DOCUMENTS...
