DISTINCTION
Disembodies
Markus Degen
The most controversial piece was Disembodies by Markus Degen. The winning arguments for this piece were that its horrific beauty was striking and is the kind of imagery not often seen in this or any other medium.
Distorted by light and shadows, calculated in 3D computer space, bodies mutate depending on the light that falls on them. Bizarre bodily forms emerge, an intensive metamorphic reality resulting from virtual perception through the artificial eye of light.
With his project Disembodies Markus Degen creates psychedelic computer-animated images, which take away all signs of life from the human body, thereby generating bewildering mask-like shapes of both human physiology and our psyche. By filming subjects using a moving light source and enabling the computer-generated space of a virtual object to interact with real light-effects, Degen creates permanently mutating object-like faces and bodies whose presence is nothing short of ghostly—despite a distinctly sculptural quality. Where ever a real and a virtual object meet the reflection of light, the creation of shadows forms brutal aesthetic body horror.
Technique
Except for a movable light source, the bodies were filmed with a DV camera in a normal set. During the filming, the light situation was constantly altered by continuously changing the position of the light—usually the camera was suspended almost statically over the bodies (the camera movements were created later in the 3D program). Using 3D software, 3D objects were created from the video material and distorted with specially developed shaders that use a combination of displacement, bump mapping and light warping by pressing in shadow surfaces and pulling out points of light. Because of the virtual objects’ dependency on the light of the real situation, the body form mutates constantly in 3D space and creates a bizarre scenario. One problem with this procedure was finding the right light technique, because the rendered material did not become visible until weeks after the test shots (many, many months ...), and it is hardly possible to tell from the original material how each light situation will affect the emerging body form. Another problem was the complexity of the shaders that interwove the video material through 8 to 14 layers and required constantly changing the parameters. To achieve a realistic effect, it was also necessary for the main light source in the 3D software to follow the same motion curve as the real light source. All the other visual effects were also created with 3D software to generate a unique 3D body world with a homogeneous effect.
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