Black or White
In this video, Marisa Olson performs the act of listening to Michael Jackson's song “Black or White.” The song's audio signals trigger shifts in the appearance of the video, inspired by Jackson's original video for the song, in which characters' faces morphed into each other—the first moment Olson remembers taking a deeper interest in digital effects.
In this video, I perform the act of listening to Michael Jackson's song, “Black or White.” The song's audio signals trigger shifts in the appearance of the video, thanks to the help of a "wobulator" built by Nam June Paik. The piece was inspired by Jackson's original video for the song, in which characters' faces morphed into each other--the first moment in which I remember taking a deeper interest in digital effects. "Black or White" traces my ongoing interests in media change and the performative aspects of spectatorship... The new question, here, is about the similarities and differences between the ways that people and machines "hear."