The Real Thing, is an interactive installation, currently held within the permanent collections of the Ipswich Art Gallery Australia and the National Museum of Singapore.

The Real Thing explores the relationship between technology, physical space and the body. The installation employs interactive technologies to instigate the emotional participation of the audience and encourage a return to embodiment and awareness of physical space.

The Real Thing continues JMDS’s exploration into the ways in which technology is constantly shifting the relationship between physical and digital space.

In the installation, the user’s movement is captured in real-time; fed through a custom built software that fragments, mirrors and refracts the content, and instantaneously projects it back as abstract seamlessly transforming patterns.

The Real Thing leverages the power and novelty of the kaleidoscope, an age-old optical illusion that reminds us of the childhood awe of watching colors and shapes transform with the turn of a wrist. Conceptually, it conjures notions of seeing and a viewer that is both subject to, and implicit in, the transient nature of what is seen.

As a metaphor, this enchanting mechanism evokes a conscious play with the viewer as witness, co-creator and interpreter of ‘truth’. The Real Thing has been designed with digital technology, but without the physical realm inhabited by the viewer’s body, it simply cannot function.