EsoMotive 2003
An Inner Portrait of Rick Allen

Project by Marcos Lutyens At Susanne Vielmetter Gallery “Another horizon, this one less evident, has fallen: in the creation of a navigable electronic non-place that nonetheless can be experienced as a fully dimensional space, we have breeched a new frontier with a new instrument: we have opened our inner worlds to ourselves and to each other through architecture as interface to the imagination. We have invented the esoscope.”

Marcos Novak
EsoMotive is a project that models and extracts a portrait of the inner self. Using hypnosis together with digital modeling technologies, special effects industry techniques, rapid prototyping and traditional aluminum sand-casting, an x-ray-like image of the inner psyche is cast into the gallery space.

The model used for this show is the renowned one-armed drummer of the band DefLeppard, Rick Allen. Following conversations about the mental ‘presence’ of his ghost limb, the idea of extracting thoughts into solids seemed to counterbalance that still-tangible loss.

This work is also tied to Lutyens’ investigations into virtual touch technology at USC, in which invisible solids were made tangible for blind kids. Lutyens’ work uses technology and psychology to build worlds that fall between the neural, the digital and the analog.