065, 069 — 2026
The viewer sits for a portrait. The painting accumulates from their motion — what moves is what gets painted. Stillness dissolves back into the ghost ground. Every 30 seconds the painting decays and rebuilds. Every 45 seconds the raw camera briefly surfaces through the paint — a moment of recognition before the painting reasserts itself.
In one piece, the painting accumulates what’s specific about you. In the other, stillness dissolves you into the statistical average of everyone else. Both require the camera. Neither can be saved.
Float32 accumulation buffer. 150 brush strokes per frame, motion-weighted placement, specificity-driven opacity. Your running mean is your ghost ground — what you usually look like. The painting prioritizes what changes: expressions, gestures, turns. The most you moments are the most painted. Sargent color transform on every stroke. Portrait format, 600×800.
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Your webcam feed, Sargent-transformed, blended with a ghost ground: the averaged face of 32 generated portraits across gender, age, and ethnicity. Be still and you dissolve into the probability field — the mean of everyone who could have been sitting here. Move and you re-emerge.
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Studies
Two studies building toward the piece. The first: basic stroke accumulation over a webcam feed, canvas 2D compositing. The second: Float32 buffer, ghost ground from the viewer’s running mean, specificity weighting. The final piece adds portrait format, ghost phase, breathing decay, and the clarity window.
065 — STUDY 1
First camera study. Canvas 2D compositing, 80 strokes per batch. Basic motion-weighted placement. Strokes accumulate, slowly decay. Proof of concept.
065 — STUDY 2
Float32 buffer, ghost ground, specificity. 200 strokes per batch. The mean builds beneath, strokes concentrate where you differ from your own average. Landscape format, no breathing cycle yet.