SightLines

SightLines began as an experiment with the simplest possible logic: read the brightness of a live camera feed, pixel by pixel, and use that value to draw a line. Built using p5.js and real-time computer vision, the work translates a visitor's body into shifting fields of lines, points, and geometric forms, each visualization driven by nothing more than light and motion.
The project marks a deliberate turn in my practice. After years of working with projection, video, and live media in service of theatre and performance, SightLines is the first work I have made where the audience's presence is the entire content. There is no script, no performer, no fixed narrative. There is only a camera, a body, and a simple set of rules for translating one into the other.

The playfulness of the work is intentional. p5.js allows for fast, intuitive experimentation, and the visualizations themselves are built to invite curiosity rather than instruction. Visitors are not told what to do. They simply stand in front of a screen and discover, often with delight, that their movement is being read and redrawn in real time.
Underneath that playfulness sits a more serious set of questions. Every camera that looks at a human body makes choices about what to keep, what to discard, and what to do with what it finds. SightLines does not answer those questions. It makes the act of being read visible, slow, and momentarily beautiful, and leaves the rest to the viewer.

This work is also a starting point. It opens a new line of inquiry in my practice around using simple computational systems to process live camera and audio input in real time, and around what playful, lightweight technology can offer live performance and multimedia work more broadly. I expect SightLines to be the first of several works exploring this territory.