When you put sandwiches in a desktop scanner, the result is delicious. When you put humans, the result… lies somewhere in the uncanny valley.
German artist Till Koeeneker created these full-size portraits of her closest friends and family members with an ordinary desktop scanner. Each one of these scanner portraits gets up close and personal, capturing every wrinkle and stray hair.
But somewhere in the process of collapsing 3D to 2D, limbs and faces are distorted just enough to look slightly off. Limbs seem to be just a little too long, faces too thin. Bodies float in featureless black space, trapped behind that looks like a glass pane.
In the video, filmed by René Stalder, you can see the scanning process.
The following image gives a sense of the detail captured in a full-sized scan.
Which is not entirely surprising, given the up close and personal technical set-up used by Koenneker for the series. [Till Koenneker via designboom]
