You may not get to stand on the winner’s podium at the Winter Olympics this February but you can at least get a share of the spotlight, in the form of an utterly bizarre scientific/ artistic achievement.
According to The Verge, British architect Asif Khan is giving visitors to Sochi, Russia a chance to project their face on the side of the wall, in a program being dubbed, fittingly, Megaface––or as The Verge is calling it, “Digital Mount Rushmore.”
Unfortunately, users won’t be treated to the same type of permanence as South Dakota’s biggest tourist attraction. There will be no Danish sculptor repelling from the roof to carve your nostrils with a chisel, nor will there be repeat trips from random tourists for the next thousand years. Instead, the image, broadcast using 10,000 acutators (a special type of motor for you non-geeks) with lights attached to them, will last only 20 seconds long. I know what you’re thinking: “But Alex! Twenty seconds isn’t a lot of time at all!” Well, consider yourselves lucky: the odds of becoming president are 1 in 10 million, making the chance of you getting on the real Mount Rushmore around zero. Therefore, this is the closest you’re probably going to get to having a shrine erected in your honor.
For those who participate, their mug will be transformed into a gigantic 500-foot image that can extend up to six feet out from the building, making it exactly 440 feet bigger than George Washington’s face on Mount Rushmore. (Take that, George!) While the installation is still being tinkered with, there is a video that demonstrates what this type of technology will look like (below). You can read more about the exhibition here and here.
