Underscan

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's Underscan, North Terrace, Trafalgar Square, 5pm - midnight. From either end of the terrace two powerful spotlights cast shadows of passing pedestrians onto the pavement.

In theory the motion of these shadows is tracked and interacts with video portrait projections on the floor. On the day that I visited there were obviously technical problems being sorted out, by technicians up ladders, and the video projections were either animated or still as opposed to interactive. The 'sleeping' image shown above should have 'woken up' as the shadow passed over it.

However it was still interesting to see peoples reactions and to watch them try to interact with the video people. Those images that physically reached out to their audience seemed to be the ones that gained most active responses.

To coincide with the installation a retrospective of Lozano-Hemmer's work is being shown in the digital suite at the ICA