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Interactive Installation

Thermal Drift (2022) is an interactive artwork that visualizes the dispersion of body heat as slow-moving thermal energy packets flowing away from participants. The project uses a thermal camera to detect heat, and a particle system to visualize its dispersion, while computational image-making reveals the porous boundary between body and environment. Increasingly used in policing and military contexts, thermal cameras are instruments illustrative of asymmetrical power wherein bodies made subject are rarely given the opportunity to see themselves in imaged form. In such applications, body heat, an essential human signature signalling life, becomes a target. In Thermal Drift, the camera is placed in a safer and more playful environment, which allows it to illustrate how body temperature paints personalized portraits. The dispersive effect of Thermal Drift reveals that humans extend beyond their skin, interacting with the atmosphere. The artwork redistributes power by allowing the ‘spectral subjects’ to witness their own images, rather than being passive subjects of surveillance.

Bio

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is a media artist working at the intersection of architecture and performance art. He creates platforms for public participation using technologies such as robotic lights, digital fountains, computerized surveillance, media walls, and telematic networks. Inspired by phantasmagoria, carnival, and animatronics, his light and shadow works are "antimonuments for alien agency."

In 2007, he became the first artist to represent Mexico at the Venice Biennale. He has exhibited at biennials in cities such as Cuenca, Havana, Istanbul, Liverpool, Melbourne, Moscow, New York, Seoul, and Shanghai. His public art has been commissioned for events like the Raurica Roman Theatre activation in Basel (2018), the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi pre-opening (2015), and the Vancouver Olympics (2010).

His work is held in major collections, including MoMA and the Guggenheim in New York, Tate in London, SFMOMA in San Francisco, ZKM in Karlsruhe, and SAM in Singapore. Lozano-Hemmer has received numerous awards and exhibited globally. He has lectured at leading institutions like Goldsmiths College, Princeton, Harvard, MIT MediaLab, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago.