Reflections: Painting With Pixels

"Reflections: Painting With Pixels" is an interactive art installation that involves a viewer in pixel painting of his or her image. The process of pixel painting is stretched in time and fragmental, allowing the viewer to contemplate on the generated image. It captures the viewer in segments of time and displays multiple instances of his or her image. The generated image continuously reinvents itself according to the viewer's position and movement. The viewer is captured via live video feed from a web cam.

Click here to view the online version
Note: This project requires Flash Player and a web cam. Make sure your web cam is not used by other applications, and most importantly, that it is turned on. Mac users might have to select the video source from the Flash Player settings.
Tip: It's important that you have sufficient amount of light in the room and a good contrast between yourself and what's behind you, the background. Enjoy the piece!

Music from a record "Sun Over Lake" by Trzaska and Seed Electronic Ensemble, a project by Mikołaj Trzaska and Jarek Grzesica (Seed Project), initiated in 2003.

Click here to read a text written by Justine Price, Ph.D. from the Art History Department at Canisius College about Reflections.

Another text originally published in 2008 for an exhibition catalog by Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in Poland:

"Przemyslaw Moskal’s Reflections is an interactive art installation, which can also be viewed online by anyone who owns a web cam at www.laksom.com. The viewer sees his or her reflection through a digital filter created by the artist. Received image varies depending on the interior, the position of the viewer and the surrounding objects. The generated image is coincidental, unpredictable, and to some degree always surprising, which makes the project more attractive. It is also ephemeral, it disappears when the computer is turned off and can only be viewed on a screen.

The image breaks away from the artist and starts to exist independently, the creator loses his control. At the end, it’s the viewer not the artist who becomes the creator. Przemyslaw Moskal invites a viewer into a dialog and provokes action and interplay. The project resembles an Internet game with its playfulness rather than an aesthetic experience.

In today’s world of mediocre creations it is difficult to make choices. Przemyslaw Moskal is not committing himself to any specific image; on the contrary, he accepts all of the possibilities even if they go beyond his expectations and imagination. It’s a very brave and even risky stance.

Reflections can be perceived as a revealing and innovative experiment that opens doors to other intermedial discoveries. The viewer doesn’t have to be a passive recipient; he or she has a chance to express him or herself and to become a creator, if even for a moment. These possibilities are given to many viewers simultaneously, but at the same time intimately, in the presence of just a computer, the project becomes like a mirror fleetingly reflecting the viewer’s image.

A great attribute of this installation is its natural ability to integrate people in a very contemporary, indirect way. Przemyslaw Moskal’s artwork has a social, interactive, and perhaps event therapeutic character."

Click here to download a catalog (2.2 MB) with a text by Agata Myjak. Printed by Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in 2008.

back to top