FILS A RETORDRE 
interactive installation

production : association Courteline, Metazone TV, Nuit Blanche 2008, Mairie du quatrième arrondissement de Paris.
"Fils à retordre" is a piece about biometrics and crowd dynamics. In the corner of a dark room, an interactive interface allows people to scan one of their fingerprints which is recorded by the machine. In the opposite corner of the room, a sensor detects and records the movement of the eye during a given period. The fingerprint and the video of the eye are projected in real-time on a circular screen located on the floor in the centre of the room. The light coming out of the beamer is diffracted through a silk helicoidal structure reminding of DNA.

Each fingerprint is then animated with a repetitive movement following the motion of an eye so as to pair the tracks of two visitors and create little by little a crowd of animated fingerprints. This animation is to be seen in the field of vision during the motion capture of the eye, which creates visual feedback since the eye is usually following the previous animations. The group of fingerprints first show chaotic movements which then seem to organize to show collective tendancies, repeated routes and stillness spots. These temporary biometric creatures little by little create an organic crowd. Each eye/finger couple is displayed until the whole screen is overcrowded. Data is then definitively destroyed to leave blank space for new visitors.

The prints we leave in our environment are recorded and recycled by the machine to produce a new, complex and moving kind of print which is no longer suitable for biometric analysis. The projected images are gathered to create a plastic memory of the previous visitors. This tracks are then reshaped by the new visitors. The progress suggested in this installation questions the relationships between individual and group. Biometry aims at reducing the individual identity to a sum of set, measurable and determined characters. Thus we propose to anybody to engage in a process of identification and self recycling through game and exchange.

To be found here the entire program and the press pack of La Nuit Blanche 2008 Métazone : "Cycle et recyclage : énergie de l'éphémère".