[Exclusive] Empathy Crosses Generations in an Immersive Installation About Aging

As the punchline of just about any store-bought birthday card suggests, many people harbor a fear of getting older. But a professor at Pennsylvania State University is confronting this phobia through an immersive video installation that aims to cultivate cross-generational empathy.

FaceAge, whichoriginated as a research project, is the brainchild of Andrew Belser, Director of the Arts and Design Research Incubator at Penn State. He envisioned a space in which pairs of younger (18-22) and older (65+) strangers could share their assumptions about and experiences with aging. Footage of the resulting encounters became the basis for the immersive three-screen video and audio installation currently on view in Art Alley at Penn State’s HUB-Robeson Center.

The inspiration for FaceAge came from the development of age progression tools, principally used by criminologists, which predict how faces will age, based on data points like gender, ethnicity, and other variables. “I found the imagery … to be gripping, not so much for its aesthetic power, but because the images of a person’s face aging through technology suggested taboos and unexplored terrain in our culture. I began to imagine a space that allowed a close study of, and meditation on, aging faces,” Belser tells The Creators Project.

The video installation surrounds viewers with footage of cross-generational encounters. During each interaction, older participants share portraits of their younger selves, while younger participants view digitally-aged images of their own faces. The 56-minute film covers multiple topics related to aging, including: “Assumptions,” “Mask and Deception,” “Memory,” “Morality,” “What the Face Holds,” and “Being Seen.”

“When the youthful photos of the older participants appear, there’s a sort of ‘snapback’ effect, in which we can see many of the qualities of youth in these older faces,” Belser says. “Somehow, the distance of time becomes a palpably present experience, [confronting us with] the fact that we are all older versions of our younger selves.”

FaceAge is on display at Art Alley in Penn State's HUB-Robeson Center through Dec. 9. Belser and his team plan to remount the work in additional venues, so keep an eye on the project website for updates.

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