Luc Courchesne was inspired to create his latest art project in 1976, while wandering through the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris. There the Montreal-born artist and designer saw a group of visitors offering hallucinogens to the bust at Jim Morrison's grave and chatting with other soulmates. Courchesne envisioned an art exhibition that would inspire such participatory fervor.
Eighteen years later, Courchesne has realized this vision as "Family Portrait," which opens at the New York Museum of Modern Art on June 4. At the exhibit, upon entering a comfortably dark gallery, you're greeted by four hanging luminous screens displaying the heads of people talking amongst themselves. They soon begin talking to you. You talk back by selecting from a menu of statements and responses. The figures flirt with you and analyze you. But Courchesne's goal isn't merely to make the portraits interesting to you. You need to be interesting to them. If you can engage a character, you get past the first level of conversation (what they do), and the second (what interests them), and arrive at the third level (what they believe in), and possibly the fourth and ultimate level of intimacy (what they confess).
For example, if you tell the formidable, 80-year-old Simone that you really like digital video, she will graciously tell you that it was a pleasure to have met you - and immediately turn away.
But, if you agree that Marianne, the coy economics student, really does have intuition, Marianne will prove it. She asks, "Do you like good food?" You select "Yes." "Do you like precision work?" "Yes." She asks a few more questions, "What do you look like?" You wonder whether people are watching as you select "I don't look my age."
"What element seems closest to you: earth, air, water, or fire?"
"Earth."
Finally she says that she sees you "among 12 people, you're eating pasta, stuffing yourself. You laugh a lot, you drink a lot, you smoke a lot.... You like excess." And you think, sure I like to enjoy life, but am I that much of a pig? Then you realize that Marianne is laughing, and furthermore she is only a shimmering semitransparent head reflected onto glass from an overhead monitor.
"Family Portrait" is state-of-the-technology art, rather than state-of-the-art technology. It uses readily available hardware and software, and not that much of it. Each character is 1 measly Mbyte of HyperCard stack with 200 video sequences on a one-hour videodisc. Courchesne says, "The mix of computer and TV is my natural medium. If I was living in Florence in the 1500s, painting and sculpture would be." Luc Courchesne: courchel@ere.umontreal.ca.
ELECTRIC WORD
Talking Portraits
