Ressentiment (2025)

TouchDesigner, Kinect Sensor, Projector, Audience Interaction.

Ressentiment is a small-scale installation that utilizes 3D Kinect sensors to capture a depth scan in real time of a viewer. This depth scan is then altered using optical flow and instancing tools to create a flowing and everchanging mirror image of the viewer. This image is then projected on the wall in front of them but will interactively disappear according to their proximity to the Kinect sensor. The resulting work places the viewer to consider an everchanging copy of themselves in the digital realm which is then projected into the real.
The title Ressentiment comes from a psychological concept where an individual may onload their inferiority or failures onto a scapegoat in the form of a resentment. The title Ressentiment aims to mirror an ever-fleeting version of self, our consciousness and a reality that is both threatened and destroyed by neurodegenerative disease such as dementia. Drawing from memories of my grandmother who suffered likewise Ressentiment aims to highlight in a novel way the experience of memory loss and the resulting effects that surround the individual. The title is an ironic play, in that the resentment and anger an inflicted individual may feel is not necessarily as a result of their own inferiority or failure, but rather that of a failing brain. The title thus, underscores the absurdity and perhaps the lack of understanding of what family members of an inflicted individual may feel: confusion, betrayal or resentment.

Ressentiment is primarily about this, the connection between our corporeal body to that of our soul. Presented by the ghost of a digital reproduction, reacting, copying and ultimately a capture of our current state.