Cosmic Surgery

COSMIC SURGERY - ALMA HASER

COSMIC SURGERY ALMA HASER

COSMIC SURGERY In the early 21st century, people forgot that electronics used to come in rigid cases. Super-thin, flexible intelligent materials – InMats – took over everything, just like the internet once did. The tablet people and the phone guys came up with mobile devices you could scrunch up and put in your pocket. When you pulled them out they’d be flat again, like magic. That’s how it all started.

The fashion industry developed InMat fabrics that change shape in response to electrical signals. They pleat or crinkle at the tap of a button, or even a brain impulse. Remember when you could wear a ring or a necklace that changed colour according to your mood, to show if you wanted company or alert you when someone across the room wanted to hook up? InMat garments go way beyond that. Your outfit can look completely different, according to your desires. Or you can turn on RandyTrance – the random transform function – and take your chances.

Of course the medical industry’s into InMats. They grow human skin cells on InMat meshes and graft them onto people’s faces.

There’s a boom in Cosmetic Electronics, which most people just call “Cosmic Surgery.” Now you can have an operation to ease your shyness, and make you more successful at work and in your social life. Your face is still your face, but you can control it better.

It won’t give you away . . .You can be whoever you want to be, from one moment to the next.

Old folks wonder what all the fuss is about. They say, if you want to change the expression on your face, why not just think the right thoughts, get yourself into the proper frame of mind and do it?

Everyone laughs at them. After all, new technology is there to make our lives easier, isn’t it? Now if you want to look confident and clever, or you need an expression that says “get out of my space,” you just let the InMats take over.

Remember when people swapped restlessly between apps and social media, or photos and vids? Apparently, some “Cosmics” have trouble deciding from one minute to the next what kind of face to wear. You can see them walking down the street, their faces flickering like broken lightbulbs. That’s Fragmentation Syndrome.

We call it Fragging.

The corporations who invented all this stuff know they have a problem. All those people walking around with lots of different faces to choose from . . . You have to wear a neutral face for police checks and border controls, but apart from that, you can be whoever you want to be – on the outside, anyway. On the inside it’s a different matter. Deep down, the corporations would prefer us to be all the same, so that we can all buy the same stuff.

They’re working hard to make this possible. Because that’s what technology is for, isn’t it? To make things easier.

Lilly & Anastasia

Alexandra

Hassan

Cassie

Shiho

Helen

Elliot

Emily

To m a s & E r i ka

Sietse

Mona

Isley

1

4

Fold a square piece of paper in half to make a triangle.

This is one unit. You need to make three.

2

5

Fold the top two corners down towards the bottom point. Then unfold.

Insert one unit inside another. Complete the chain by connecting both ends.

3

Fold both layers of the bottom point up to the top. Then unfold.

6

Turn over and push the bottom sections in. You should end up with this 3D shape.

ALMA HASER Alma Haser was born in 1989 into an artistic family in the Black Forest, Germany. Today she is based in London and Hastings. She specialises in carefully constructed portraiture influenced by her creativity and background in fine art. Her most celebrated series is Cosmic Surgery, which has won many awards and exhibited worldwide.

Cosmic Surgery portraits are made in three distinct stages: 1

Firstly Alma photographs her sitter, in her living room or a convenient studio.

2

She then prints multiple images of the sitter’s face and folds them into a complicated origami modular construction.

3

The origami gets placed onto the original printed portrait and the whole thing is re-photographed to produce the final 2D Cosmic Surgery portrait.

Without these people this project wouldn’t have been possible: Thanks to Emily Macaulay for putting the time and effort into this project, and turning my ideas into reality.

Thanks to Piers Bizony, my stepfather, for writing the brilliantly imaginative intro text for this book.

Thanks to everyone who sat in front of my camera. Even if you’re not in the final cut, every portrait taken was a step closer to making this book.

Thanks to Nick Ballon, for listening to me ramble on about the project over the last three years, and for not letting me give up.

Lastly thanks to my mother for encouraging me and supporting me in every possible way.

Photographer and concept - Alma Haser Designer - Emily Macaulay www.stanleyjamespress.com Writer - Piers Bizony Printers - One Digital, Brighton

www.haser.org