Reflections
Continues Through September 20, 2009

What’s new this summer? You — at the Exploratorium. Reflections lets you look at your own image as you’ve never seen it before. Reflections, on view through September 20, 2009, is an exhibition combining new art installations by New York-based artist Daniel Rozin — interactive works that highlight Rozin’s provocative take on self-examination — as well as re-imagined exhibits and Exploratorium classics. See your reflection with imagery of your skeleton, blood flow, and beating heart superimposed. Multiply your visage into hundreds of kaleidoscopic views, use computers and curved mirrors to distort your appearance, experiment with your own face under different wavelengths of light — and play with perspective to capture aspects of yourself you’ve rarely witnessed. It’s all part of the Exploratorium’s summer investigation of those wonderfully confusing things called mirrors. All of Rozin’s artworks are provided courtesy of bitforms gallery nyc and ITP — New York University. Reflections is included in the price of admission to the Exploratorium.

While you’re at it, explore the scientific and cultural history of mirrors — one of humankind’s most influential and intimate technologies — through activities and special events in conjunction with the exhibition. Mirrors have played fundamental roles in sciences from cosmology to microbiology, shrinking vast intergalactic distances and making the tiniest life visible, while also inspiring countless creative explorations of their poetic and psychological qualities.

Reflections always mirror, in one form or another, the light that falls on reflective surfaces. (Unless of course the mirror is a heat camera, one of the exhibits on view.) If the light has your shape, and the reflecting surface is a good mirror, you’ll see a clear image of yourself. But what about bad mirrors, cracked mirrors, distorted mirrors, multiple mirrors, redirecting mirrors, water mirrors or odd illumination? All we know for sure is that light always carries information in the form of images. And reflections, in some fashion, always mirror those images. At the Exploratorium, you’ll explore the startling possibilities, as well as new Exploratorium exhibits like Giant Mirror, Elastotron, Topo Kaleidoscope, and Parabolic Surface Multi-Eye Mirror.

At the center of the exhibition is the work of New York-based interactive artist Daniel Rozin, who creates installations and sculptures that have the unique ability to change and respond to the presence and point of view of the viewer. In many cases “you” are the content of the piece and in others you are invited to take an active role in its creation. Even though computers are often used in Rozin’s work, they are seldom visible, but other materials may be — everything from chrome balls and bits of trash to software mirrors that produce digital reflections.

Among the works by artist Daniel Rozin on view are:

Mirrors Mirror (2008)
Mirrors Mirror uses 768 small mirrors, a total of 4 columns of “pixels” forming a concave surface. The exhibit creates a private image seen only by the person reflected – you!

Broken Red Mirror (2000)
When standing in front of a broken mirror, a shattered mirror that has the ability to recollect the shattered image into its original state, you’ll be surprised by how you see yourself reflected in it – something much different than you might either expect or believe.

Self-Centered Mirror (2009)
An arrangement of 34 vertical panes of mirror where you miraculously see yourself reflected on all 34 panes. Everyone else in the space with you is not reflected, a moment of total reflective narcissism.

Self-Exclusive Mirror (2009)
The opposite of Self-Centered Mirror. When you stand in front of this mirror, you can see everyone around you reflected in all 34 panes.

Snow Mirror (2006)
Snow Mirror plays with time and black and white. See yourself as the congregation and accumulation of white snow flakes projected on a transparent silk fabric — a feeling that you (the snow flakes) are being suspended in space.

Shaking Time Mirror (2005)
This software mirror examines the notions of time, stasis, and motion. When the viewer stands still, a crust forms over the reflected image in the mirror. When the viewer moves, the crusty image flakes off, revealing the color underneath.

Mirror No. 5 (2001)
The pixels of this mirror are shaped like Pacman figures. As the Pacmans roll across the mirror from left to right, their mouths open and close, creating light and dark areas that together build the image of the viewer.

Mirror No. 9 (2001)
This mirror creates a mosaic interpretation of the viewer’s image, using blocks of various sizes.

In addition, there are new Exploratorium exhibits to visit. At Giant Mirror, interact with a giant upside-down image of yourself and your friends, and explore an image of the museum where even the smallest faraway object appears in perfect focus and detail. At Topo Me, your face and body transform into elevation lines defining your features, and mirrors multiply you into an abstraction with a radically symmetrical design. At See Yourself on the Inside, see your reflection with imagery of your skeleton, blood flow, and beating heart superimposed. Elastotron is a video mirror that translates what it sees into a bouncy, elastic mesh. Motion and shape become fluid waves rippling across the surface of the mirror.

Classic exhibits on view include Mirrors, exploring reflections in the twists and turns of curved surfaces; Everyone is You and Me, where you can mix your reflection with that of another, combining yourselves feature by feature; Your Father’s Nose, where you’ll see a composite image of your face and your partner’s; Visual Streams, where you’ll see how different kinds of visual information are processed in different areas of the brain; Duck into a Kaleidoscope, where multiple reflections create the impression of a crowd; and Heat Camera, where infrared light picks up the heat emitted by visitors and displays it as a color image on a large screen, among many others.

About Daniel Rozin

Born in Jerusalem and trained as an industrial designer, artist Daniel Rozin lives and works in New York. His work has been exhibited widely with solo exhibitions in the US and internationally and featured in publications such as The New York Times, Wired, ID, Spectrum and Leonardo. His work has earned him numerous awards, including Prix Ars Electronica, ID Design Review and the Chrysler Design Award.

As an educator, Rozin is Associate Art Professor at ITP, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. As developer, Rozin owns Smoothware Design, a software company that creates tools for the interactive art and multimedia authoring community.