Present Tension examines what happens when presence becomes input for computation. In public space, to appear before a camera or sensor, is to participate without being asked. Presence is becoming consent—to be recorded and have your likeness manipulated. A body can be targeted, anonymized, or transformed into sound and image. How do we opt-out of that as a society? These works surround visitors with this uneasy overlap between participation and surveillance.
The title Present Tension holds several meanings at once. “Present” points to the immediate now of real-time systems: cameras, computer vision models, or generative AI tools that respond while the viewer is present. It also names a social tension around consent to use your likeness. In contemporary public space, presence is increasingly treated as tacit permission to be observed, stored and analyzed. The question is no longer only who is watching, but what kind of image, target, or abstraction a person becomes once they are seen—and how does that affect our sense of self or identity.
Carlos J. Gómez de Llarena approaches this condition through video installations and AI-assisted workflows. The exhibit does not present AI as a single subject or style. Instead, it treats computer vision as part of a broader system of mediated perception, where technologies of recognition can move between control and play, violence and spectacle, disappearance and performance.
The works include finished studies, others are prototypes in development welcoming audience participation feedback. Visitors will see themselves conducting a kinesthetic audiovisual performance, erased from camera feeds or turned into beauty queens within the same space. Together they extend Gómez de Llarena's practice around public space, responsive media, and participatory systems into a new set of questions shaped by machine vision and generative image-making advancements.