Technology and the Shadow: Interactive Mirrors by Daniel Rozin

Daniel Rozin makes mirrors. These are not your every day looking glasses, but sculptures and installations that respond to the observer, reflecting movement and changes in perspective. His interactive mechanical mirrors combine technology and art to draw the audience in and make them an integral part of the work. These works often appear deceptively simple, concealing both the mathematics and the computers which are at play to capture motion and recreate it. Rozin, an Associate Art Professor at The Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, trained as an industrial designer but his skills and interests led him in a different and fascinating direction.

Here are just two of his works, which exemplify both the minimalist elegance and delightful playfulness inherent in his pieces. Who knew a shadow could be so awe-inspiring?

Rozin’s “Peg Mirror” comprises 650 circular wooden pieces that are cut on an angle. Casting shadows by twisting and rotating in unison, wooden pegs forming concentric circles surround a small central camera. The mirrored image produced in this work is activated by software authored by Rozin that processes video signals and breaks up imagery geometrically, seemingly pixel by pixel. The silently moving wood components in this piece flicker like jewels or coins in the spotlight, challenging our notions about what constitutes a “digital object”. 

–Bitforms Gallery via Vimeo

“Rust Mirror” is a mechanical sculpture that organizes 768 “rusty” rectangular pixels along a picture plane. Placing deliberate emphasis on the way motion passes through coordinates in a grid, the cascading vertical movement in this piece emphasizes tension between the natural outdoors and virtual environments. A meditation on decay, obsolescence and regeneration, the full experience of this work is completed by the viewer- who takes part, actively and creatively, in the performance of Rozin’s art.

–Bitforms Gallery via Vimeo

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