Ghost In the Machine
Sheyne Tuffery: Ghost in the Machine
29 June – 1 September 2013
Wellington City Art Gallery
Artist and Curator
3-dimensional Stereoscopic Animation.
This exhibition at Wellington City Art Gallery explores the intersection of tradition and technology through a reimagining of Pacific matai and chiefly figures. Inspired by my recent ordination as a chief (matai) in Samoa, the work reflects on the responsibilities, identity, and legacy of this role.
The project began as my own research, producing enhanced scans of vintage photographs—mostly of unknown Samoan elders from museum collections—that I digitally reworked.
These images evolved into a stereoscopic animation designed to engage the public with an immersive experience. Using early 20th-century photographic portraits, postcards, and etchings as a base, I employed new media—specifically stereoscopic animation projected through three projectors—to revive and reinterpret these historical images.
This technique adds depth and invites viewers to engage more deeply with the complexity of Pacific identity and cultural memory. Ghost in the Machine challenges the static, often frozen portrayal of Pacific identity common in museums, transforming archival materials into dynamic narratives that resonate with contemporary realities and personal reflections on leadership and heritage.
The work acts as a temporal portal, bridging past and present while questioning how identity evolves within modernity and digital culture.
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A selection of enhanced scans, digitally re-edited, which sparked a deeply personal narrative that emerged suddenly after becoming a matai.
Matai (after Webber)
Fine art pigment print on Roasapina Paper 80 x 60cm edition of 15
"Reconstruction/ re imagination of John Webber's etchings of the Hawaiian chief Kaneena"
In 2006, I was given the Samoan chiefly title of Matai, and Ghost in the Machine is my way of exploring what that really means—especially being so far from Samoa. It felt strange at first, because I don’t live there, don’t speak Samoan, and don’t live the fa’asamoa way. There’s this tension, this anxiety, about carrying a traditional role in a world so different from where it began.
The work draws on these romantic, haunting images of matai from nineteenth-century photos and etchings—like those by Webber, Captain Cook’s artist. Using animation and stereoscopic technology,
I brought to life 3D moving portraits of these unnamed chiefs from the Te Papa collection. Viewers wear glasses to see the images float and move in space. It’s about imagining how those ancestors might see today’s world—how they’d carry their duties and identity across time, distance, and global change.
Uso Tolu
screen print 2013
70 x 50 cm print size. /. Limited edition
Inspired from an old etching of a Hawaiian Warrior
The Unknown Toa. (enhanced scan of old vintage )
Trial Draft - not been exhibited 90 x 60 cm
Printed on Kodak Lustre Photographic Paper
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These original photographs were found in the archives of Te Papa Museum, mostly from the Brown Brothers Studios dating back to the late 1880s. Most of the subjects are listed as unknown.”
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mages taken from the video installation
