2018-2019

TEO is an interactive artwork that explores the digitalisation of the human form in social media avatars. Created by artists Henry Driver and Barbara Dougan, TEO combines artificial intelligence, face tracking, and feature detection with live CGI to enable participants to control and animate virtual avatars that mimic our facial expressions and movements. By interacting with TEO, the audience glimpses the revolutionary possibilities – as well as dystopian outcomes – of virtual avatars.

“The popularity of creating altered virtual selves through social media and applications such as Snapchat’s body altering lenses suggest we are happy to change and enhance our appearance, but how far will we go? Will we vanquish the human form, and all its pressures/trappings, creating unique forms for the virtual world instead? Or will the technology be designed to impose societal, hierarchical and corporate conventions, and determine how our bodies are represented.”

TEO was initially protoyped for Collusion's Bury St Edmunds R&D Challenge before being commissioned for the Collusion 2019 exhibition.