Cristobal Cea

Ghosts is a series of site specific video sculptures that derives from the motion capture data of anonymous people in Newsreels: The disembodied presence of the witnesses, unwillingly or unknowingly cast in the collective conscience of images, is re-enacted as ghosts; Boundless, place-less, condemned to perpetually repeat the actions that defined them.

Ghosts of Concordia

5 minutes / HD / Color / Stereo

2016

Starting from a 1 minute newsclip, Ghosts of Concordia recreates the floods of Concordia (Argentina, December 2015), using a variety of 3D Animation and Digital Postproduction tools, in order to restore the gaze towards this now forgotten event: Ghosts, Virtual cameras and 3D performances recreated from the little information available in the digital newsclip, configure a looping narration based in impossibility of knowing if these problems where ever solved: the inconsolable distance that separates event, witness and spectator.

The piece has had many incarnations, at festivals, galleries (some of them don´t exist anymore), pop-up venues and residencies. In most cases I´ve tried to update the video with site specific renderings: it is memory not a memory.

CNC System, Custom Software Script, Motion Tracking, HD Video and Screen.
CGI Animation, Motion Tracking Data, HD Video.

Stability is a sculptural work and a series of animations that emerged out of a question in regards to stability and camera rigs. A current trend in filming is to have footage that is as stable as possible. Since the days of Sony’s “Steady Shot” to the current use of Motorized GoPro Gimbals, the trend is to create films that seem as if they where shot by a ghost.  

The sculptures and animations of this series reverse this procedure. By using stabilization data to move the physical screen, they aim to restore the physical presence of the subject who witnessed the banal scenes used as footage. 

A Mother Grieves for Her Son is part of a series of computer animations derived from applying Matchmoving and Motion Tracking techniques to found newsclips. It is fundamentally an effort in extending the notion of observation by re-interpreting the events depicted, as an active viewer, by means of machine vision: Yielding Virtual Dopelgangers of newscasts. 

The Big Blues is a project about obsolescence. An IBM Server contemplating himself rendered in realtime, in a junkyard, in Rhode Island. Simulations of itself being broken and crashed, hard drives embodying catastrophic failres, etc.

The possibility of pain in digital bodies?

(2009)

A partir de una reflexión sobre el vínculo entre medios digitales
y afectividad, desarrollé el proyecto TACTO con la intención de
crear un prototipo capaz de transmitir mensajes que, si bien
son abstractos para un ordenador, resultan comprensibles para
nosotros en el contexto de experiencias tan humanas como el
amor y el cariño.

Así, busco generar un espacio en las redes informáticas para
mensajes afectivos, táctiles, que aunque poco legibles y
difícilmente repetibles, están llenos de significancia y sentido
subjetivo. Mensajes que son más que la suma de datos y forman
la base de un lenguaje –el de los afectos– que trasciende la idea
de ‘información’.