January 10, 2005
Public Genitals Project
Not Safe for Walks
The Public Genitals Project , by Sandy Stone, playfully questions the boundaries between inside and outside, revealed and hidden, representation and reality.
Each PGP unit consists of a video broadcast receiver, battery pack, two small loudspeakers, and two modified laptop computers worn by a person walking the streets of Austin.
In one version, the person is naked except for the screens, which are attached to suspenders and worn so they cover the genital areas front and back. In the second version the person is fully clothed except for cutouts over the genital areas front and back, within which the two screens are mounted.
In operation, participants worldwide send images of their genital areas via webcams. The images are digitally manipulated according to an algorithm driven by the number of times the words "sex" and "violence" appear on the webpages of CNN, MSNBC, and CBS. The digital manipulation smooths and abstracts the images; the more the terms "sex" and "violence" appears in the media, the more that actual body images recede toward imagined recollections. The images are then broadcast and displayed on the flat screens. Concurrently, the loudspeakers present ethnographically recorded narratives of personal experiences with nudity, shyness, and desire, which are stored as sound files on the computers. The juxtaposition of images and physical body surface is meant to convey the illusion that the viewer is looking through a transparent electronic window at the surface of the wearer's body.
In reality, no actual flesh-and-blood genitalia are directly visible, and no explicit representation of individual genitalia is shown, though it is likely that this distinction may be lost on the naive viewer -- we hope. (Posted by Régine Debatty)
Posted by Regine at January 10, 2005 09:19 AM
