Collaborating since 1991, Lilla LoCurto and Bill Outcault are artists whose work, focusing on the frailty of the human body, employs 3-D whole body laser scanning technology to map and re-visualize the figure. They developed a software program to create typographies from the topographic information contained within a scanned figure completely abstracting it into unrecognizable line forms. The resulting deconstruction of the human form visually generated choreographed imagery which led the team into making animations. Working with the body in three-dimensions, in combination with time and motion, made them aware that the images captured by a traditional camera were limited to a single viewpoint, fixing the photographic eye in time. Including multiple camera views into their software gave them an opportunity to explore the omni-directional nature of the 3d photographic images, using the unlimited number of viewpoints derived from a single scan to place the viewer outside the frame of traditional lens-based perspectival vision. LoCurto and Outcault explore the human body by altering the way they visualize the figure. The scanner’s cameras used in their work record only external information and the hollowness of the resulting figures contributes to a sense of de-realization, the feeling that nothing is real, while the shredding of the figures makes them seem both anonymous and universal. In their most recent work they have moved away from animation as the sole footage source. Their newer pieces include the use of models from a whole body scanner but also incorporate, among other things, motion captured actors and dancers within the video, blending their movements with the animations and making a collage of sorts by compositing the various images.
Their exhibitions include the widely traveled solo exhibition selfportrait.map, which originated at the List Visual Art Center at MIT. They also have had solo exhibitions in New York at the Frederieke Taylor Gallery, Fundacio Joan Miro, Barcelona, Spain and Carpenter Center at Harvard University. Their work has been included in such group exhibitions as New Art. New York: Reflections on the Human Condition in Traun, Austria, Digital: Printmaking Now at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and Contemporaneou.s. in Cornwall and Sunderland, UK. They have also contributed chapters and articles about their work to such publications as The Meaning of Photography, Clark Institute; Mapping in the Age of Digital Media, Yale Univ., and the journal Cartographic Perspectives. Published essays on their work include Lilla LoCurto and William Outcault: Self-Portraits for a New Milennium by Helaine Posner for Art Journal, spring 2006 and [un]moving pictures by Patricia Phillips in 2006 for a ten year survey exhibition at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz. They have held residencies at Maryland Institute College of Art, Colorado State University, Harvard University and the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio. This year, 2013, they are recipients of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.
Their exhibitions include the widely traveled solo exhibition selfportrait.map, which originated at the List Visual Art Center at MIT. They also have had solo exhibitions in New York at the Frederieke Taylor Gallery, Fundacio Joan Miro, Barcelona, Spain and Carpenter Center at Harvard University. Their work has been included in such group exhibitions as New Art. New York: Reflections on the Human Condition in Traun, Austria, Digital: Printmaking Now at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and Contemporaneou.s. in Cornwall and Sunderland, UK. They have also contributed chapters and articles about their work to such publications as The Meaning of Photography, Clark Institute; Mapping in the Age of Digital Media, Yale Univ., and the journal Cartographic Perspectives. Published essays on their work include Lilla LoCurto and William Outcault: Self-Portraits for a New Milennium by Helaine Posner for Art Journal, spring 2006 and [un]moving pictures by Patricia Phillips in 2006 for a ten year survey exhibition at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz. They have held residencies at Maryland Institute College of Art, Colorado State University, Harvard University and the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio. This year, 2013, they are recipients of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.
