Digital Twins
Digital Photographs on Canvas by Hugo Bastidas
Over a period of three years Hugo Bastidas has taken over three hundred portrait photographs of people whom he has randomly encountered in Iceland, France, the United States and other destinations in the artist's extensive travels.
The work was first displayed at DIVA New York in March, 2006, where it drew the attention of Ken Johnson in a New York Times article on the various art fairs taking place in New York from March 9-13.
The work is a study of symmetry and our notion of perfection. Perfectly symmetrical faces do not exist in nature, yet our culture views them as desirable. Other factors being equal, aspiring models and actors who are more symmetrical have a better chance of success than those that are not.
Many viewers also contemplate the notion of a split personality when viewing the images. The twins often exude different emotions.
The creation of Digital Twins requires the use of a computer. The frontal face image of the original photograph is split down the middle, the "twins" are formed by mirroring each side the into perfect symmetry and then placing them side by side.
The result are two "people" who do not look quite alike. The distance between the eyes from one image to another, the width of the nose, and even the shape of the mouth will be different. One realizes that the two "twins" are related in an eery and unfamiliar kind of way.
Bastidas was very meticulous in his selection of the Digital Twins proofs. Only four of the 300 images taken so far are used. The rejection rate is high because many images result in an akwardness of one feature or another that is immediately obvious: a position of an eye which, when mirrored, looks unnatural; a twist in the position in the neck; features of clothing or hairs which draw attention to themselves. Any of these quirks or oddities results in rejection. Both twins, although digitally unnatural, are perfectly sincere human images.
