Limited Edition of 100.

Built with a Mac Mini, 30” LCD screen, webcam, the Processing language, custom-built wood case, paint, metal plaque.

The idea of a mirror is pretty basic to the whole idea of being an individual. To understand we are discrete, we had to see ourselves, didn’t we? Along with fire and the wheel, shiny reflective surfaces have done a lot for us as a species. Maybe not all good, of course, but reflections have been tied to the idea of identity, self-esteem and beauty ever since Narcissus took his long look at the stream’s surface.

Here we should make some bold claim about improving upon this time-honored tradition, sort of like how the Japanese are always working on a better toilet. And maybe our new mirror is an improvement. We think of it more as a remix, however.

It’s a connected world nowadays, isn’t it? No man is an island, right? Was that Simon or Garfunkel? Kidding. Still, though, there’s the idea of us being part of a community, of a group. People are interconnected. They are, in essence, made up of facets of other people. You really do have your dad’s eyes don’t you?

Not too long ago, the Barbarians did a gig with some people: This is Real Art and Matt Pyke, aka Universal Everything. We all worked together on a project for a flagship Nokia store in Hong Kong. Our part was to make a Processing-based software application that took the input from a webcam and assembled a mosaic of the image from the webcam, using a series of pre-stored images, text, and previous input from the webcam. All the source images were the same size, and square, which felt a bit limiting, but the video made for a nice effect. People would walk by the store and ooo and ahh. Robert, one of The Barbarian Group founders, aka Flight 404, made this and we were all well chuffed.

Late last year the Barbarians made friends with the “McLeod Residence”, a new type of interactive art gallery and space in Seattle. It was a natural match, of course – our band of digital artists and designers are always looking for new outlets, and while we’ve had great success in commercial outlets, sometimes you want something a bit more… pure. Uncompromising. Upscale. Then one day, Buster McLeod and Barbarian Co-founder Rick Webb were walking down the street, slightly tipsy, and Buster said “You guys should make our bathroom mirrors like you did for that Nokia project.” And eureka! An idea was born. The marriage of the like-minded.

We tweaked our code and made it unique. We got the mirrors working with images of different sizes, creating an entirely new sensation. We wrote code to capture the images from the previous viewers into the mirror to reinforce the community aspect of the McLeod Residence’s private bar. You can see your fellow club members in the mirror, reminding you that you are part of a like-minded community. We brought Barbarian Ryan McManus into the mix to apply his industrial design prowess and to design us a case. We also got Brit Charlebois, then a Barbarian producer, and Andrew Bell, a Barbarian visual architect to round out our ranks. Ryan brought his former compatriot Ben Durrell into the game to help us design and fabricate our cases. Rick spent a lot of time tweaking the computer’s OS to act more like an appliance than a buggy, crashy PC. Robert kept tweaking his code for beauty, speed and awesomeness. Eventually everything came together. Brit kept us sane. Andrew made Robert’s code prettier and generally optimized things. It takes a village.

And so you have it: We are offering the McLeod Mirror as a digital art piece in a limited edition of 100 units. The Barbarians’ first physical product for sale. Bathrooms unlike any you’ve ever seen at a new kind of art gallery. We’ve also provided this video to give you an idea of how the mirrors work, though it doesn’t really do the mirrors justice. We’ll try to shoot a better one sometime. Or you can go see them in action at the McLeod Residence, in Seattle. Or hey, if you’re feeling frisky, you can be the first on your block to own this unique, groundbreaking piece of interactive digital art.