Passing Faces

By Erin Thomson

My project was inspired by the art project established in 1999 by Professor Iain Hutchison “Saving Faces”. Professor Hutchison wanted the project to illustrate the possibilities of modern facial surgery and to show that people with facial disability are able to enjoy happy, successful and fulfilled lives. Mark Gilbert took up the challenge of painting his patients before and after surgery. He observed the surgeries first hand, learning how the patients' faces changed during surgery. The relationships that formed between Mark and the subjects greatly informed the paintings. 

I decided to create a piece of digital art containing the many faces within our friendship group; their ethnic backgrounds, gender and sexuality all different. However, this piece is to represent the togetherness we all have. We shot short video clips of each of my 5 models (Alana, Alex, Anna, Carlin, Dana and Evan), and mapped these short videos onto boxes using a software called VPT.