CUBE: The artist designed the venue, but what happens inside the cube is up to the person “sitting” for the portrait.  Some people are symbolic, some send a message and still others show off their personality. George Clooney spent his hour dancing to Frank Sinatra tunes with women of all ages.

CUBE is the brainchild of new-media artist Lincoln Schatz. It is a 10′x10′ box with translucent walls. Twenty-four cameras are mounted in the room at varying heights, all of them attached to a separate computer. A person spends one hour in the CUBE, doing whatever they choose. During the one-hour sitting, digital capture from each video camera is streamed to a computer that houses software designed by the artist. The resulting portrait is compiled from thousands of randomly selected video files; these images are constantly reconfigured providing a continuously evolving portrait presented on a plasma screen powered by a computer.

“Long central to my work was the desire to merge artistic practice with the everyday experience of life, replete with its compounding accrual of information,” Schatz explains. “Combined with a lifelong pursuit of photography, this led me to my generative video portraits in 2001.” Schatz started with one screen and one camera taking pictures of a specific environment or space. The CUBE, as a new way to take a portrait, grew out of that original concept.

In honor of it’s 75th anniversary, Esquire Magazine and the Hearst Corporation commissioned Schatz to create dozens of video portraits of people who are helping shape the 21st century – George Clooney, Marc Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Danger Mouse, David Chang, LeBron James and dozens of others from every discipline. The video portraits are displayed in an impressive exhibit at the Hearst Tower in New York City. As Schatz finishes a new portrait, the installation, Esquire’s Portrait of the 21st Century, grows and changes to accommodate the new arrivals.

Written by: Erin Clark

ARTWORKS Magazine – Winter 2008