The technology to turn oneself into a mixed-race avatar might be confined to movies, but Brian Banton plays with racial manipulations of himself online, wrote the Toronto Star (online) Jan. 27 in a that included of him.
As a 91亚色 graduate student, he explores questions of racial hybridity as related to corporate design. Much of the work is obscurely theoretical, Banton says. 鈥淏ut I also want to be playful. (Mixed race) is a serious issue but I don鈥檛 want to be heavy-handed.鈥
Banton was born in Brampton, the offspring of a Scottish-born mother and Jamaican-born father. When visiting his mother鈥檚 family, he feels black, he says. When he鈥檚 with his father鈥檚 family, he feels white. He calls himself 鈥渕ixed鈥 and 鈥渂iracial鈥 and 鈥渏ust myself,鈥 but he also admits to a low-level underlying anxiety. People have guessed him to be Italian, Greek, Arab and South American, he says, never half-Scottish, half-Jamaican. 鈥淭here is comfort in being explicitly part of a community,鈥 Banton says. 鈥淚鈥檓 in this middle space, not fully committed to one side."
Banton鈥檚 girlfriend, whom he describes as half-Asian, half-white, recently came across a Web site called . Built by Scotland鈥檚 University of St. Andrews, it allows the user to upload a headshot and see what the face would look like as another race.
鈥(The software) clearly shows visual markers that identify us physically in the face,鈥 Banton says. 鈥淚鈥檝e always played on my own ambiguity and I thought this was just pushing it a bit further.鈥
In one photo, he comes out as a white person. In three others, he comes out in progressively darker shades. 鈥淚 want to experiment,鈥 he says. 鈥淚t would be interesting to set up different accounts on dating sites and see if people are more attracted to an Asian version of me versus the black or white version.鈥