Kaylie Leung

Face value & the feed

Class of: 2029

Major: Communication Design BFA

Medium: Mixed media

Faculty: Liv Garber

Prompt: For this project, students will create a short, intentional experience that physically, sensorially, or interactively immerses the viewer in their thesis. The goal is to synthesize the concepts and techniques explored during previous Bridges, such as projection, material experimentation, participation, and spatial design, into a cohesive, activated, and experiential work. This project emphasizes immersion, interaction, and discovery, where the viewer engages with the artwork beyond simply looking.

A large-scale interactive sculpture in the form of a pink piggy bank. One half of the pig’s body is carved into seven domestic rooms following a pork butcher’s map—living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, dining room, office, laundry room—each inhabited by miniature clay furniture, the artist, and lights that turn off and on. The other half houses a photo booth: a camera reads the visitor’s facial expression in real time and on capture prints a thermal receipt documenting their expression and the time of their visit. 

PIR sensors embedded in the pig’s eye sockets detect body heat and trigger a layered wind chime system through speakers in the nostrils. The pig responds to your presence before you’ve done anything. The more movement it detects, the more the chimes multiply. The receipt is yours to keep or to leave on the pig’s back, where it joins every face that came before. At its core, Face Value and the Feed is about what happens when a machine is given the authority to read you. Your face is detected, your expression is named, your visit is logged and printed. The piece asks what it means to move through a system that processes you—what you put in, what comes out, and who benefits from knowing how you feel. It’s all wrapped up in a cute, giant pink bubble.