Miri Segal, Desolate anonymous gazes cross, 2014

Statement – Miri Segal
During the past ten years, I have been working as an artist creating new media
installations. At the same time, I have been drawing upon my mathematics background (I have a PhD from the Hebrew University in mathematics) to collaborate with scientists in a wide variety of cross-disciplinary research projects.
In my installations I use video projections in a sculptural manner. The video acts in the surrounding space to disrupt sensory suppositions about the relationship between the observer and observed, thus the viewer becomes attentive to his/her position which is simultaneously participatory and voyeuristic. A brief description of two of my works – Place de la Bonne Heure and Co-Operation – will give you an indication of the sort of work that I am doing and my artistic directions.
In "Place de la Bonne Heure 2005/6" the viewer, a single viewer sits on a chair at the center of the space which serves as a viewing platform. Once the viewer sits, the chair starts revolving. On the back of the chair, adjacent to the viewer's line of vision, a projector screens a video, which moves across the walls. As the chair rotates the viewer voyages between two public squares: the Place de la Bonne Heure in Tel Aviv and the Kalandiya checkpoint (situated between Jerusalem and Ramallah). Sitting there, the viewer undertakes a double journey, like the earth, a simultaneous rotation and revolution. This journey goes to the heart of a complex reality which is political and social but also topographical, seen through a double viewpoint, that of a child (who is part of the video) and that of the viewer.
"Co-Operation 2006" attempts to address the mind-body problem as well as the politics of role-playing by service agents in contemporary society. In this work, a human actor personifying an avatar moves around a public exhibition space offering himself to the control of a viewer who sits in a remote and secluded cabin. The viewer can command the actor where to go, what to say, and can see in real-time through the actor's eyes, speak through his mouth and listen through his ears. The mind of the viewer is cumbersomely projected onto the actor; creating all sorts of misunderstandings in the attempt to establish communication between the viewer and his new body. (I made a documentary film about the subject of avatars, “BRB, 2006-2007”. It was shot entirely in "Second Life").
My work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in public institutions including PS1 in New York, the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and the Israel Museum, as well as in private galleries such as the Lisson Gallery in London, Kamel Mennour Gallery in Paris and Dvir Gallery in Tel Aviv.
In addition to my work in new media installations, I continue to explore the relationship between art and science by collaborating with scientists and other artists. My research relates both to science and to art. I attempt to bridge between the "two cultures" by creating a hybrid form of cross-disciplinary collaboration where some of the scientific questions are raised by myself. In 2004/5 I directed a physical computing lab at the Israeli Center for Digital Art. At the lab I worked on using electro-cardiogram signals to manipulate sound. Later on, I collaborated with Prof. Nathan Intrator, a mathematician at Tel Aviv University, in a project dealing with the sonification of bio and medical signals. We also gave a graduate seminar on this subject at Tel Aviv University. I am continuing to develop this project together with Profs. Offer Barnea and Roni Shapira from Tel Aviv University. The project, called "Music for the Heart", involves creating the interface and hardware for musical compositions that change in response to the heart beats of the listener. This project, which has several technological implications, especially in the fields of fitness and sport, creates a new platform for musical experimentation.
Currently I am collaborating with a cinematographer and a leading professor of
computing and future studies from Nottingham University (UK). We are examining
radical changes in "the way human beings are" due to technological and scientific
developments. It is analogous to Kurzweil's singularity but it doesn't focus on the full
scope of the singularity. It rather deals with a much more modest imaginative
development. In this project, we are imagining a new technology which is almost feasible today. It involves a non-invasive brain computer interface (BCI) which can be used regularly for daily life. We would like to examine the social and psychological
implications of this on the human soul in particular our relationship with our most
intimate memories. This examination will be presented in the form in a multi-media
installation, partially interactive, that will be exhibited in 2010 in Tel Aviv and later on in Paris. It is supported by the Israeli Film Foundation.
Miri Segal, 2009
"This image is a lenticular print featuring two images. If you look from right to the left you will see the face, the portrait of “Satoshi Nakamoto” – the sobriquet of the creator (or creators) of the Bitcoin virtual currency. A search for Satoshi Nakamoto, on the internet brought up the male portrait before you. The image is clearly an identikit of an Asian man. Segal went for a long research to find its origin. At the time, an image search led to no results, finally after conducting search inside online video's for still images, Segal discovered that the identikit was created by National Geographic magazine in 2011. By merging together hundreds of thousands of portraits, in a bid to create the portrait of the “average person.” The generation of a face whose features would embrace and sublimate all the different racial characters of today’s global population – in other words the middleman par excellence.

If you look from left to right you will see Afghan Girl, an award-winning photograph taken by journalist Steve McCurry that was on the cover of the June 1985 issue of National Geographic magazine. The photograph has been called “the First World’s Third World Mona Lisa.” While superimposing the two faces in order to have their eyes coinciding, Segal also included two inscriptions : If you look from right to left you will see the logo of the National Geographic while if you look from left to right you will see the bitcoin symbol “฿“ with the motto “in code we trust,” a reinterpretation of the inscription “in god we trust” found on the US twenty-dollar bill. "

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