You step into a photo booth that looks like it would be at home in any mall. After sitting, you realize that you aren’t in a normal photo booth. You see a picture of yourself on the monitor in front. Suddenly, your features begin to change, your face begins to morph and change color. The picture staring back at you looks a bit like you, but different somehow. You’re a completely different race.
This isn’t a science fiction show, or some dream brought on by eating pizza too late at night – you’re in the Human Race Machine.
The Human Race Machine, created by artist Nancy Burson, will be in the D.P. Culp Center Atrium Nov. 6-10 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
It is meant to raise diversity awareness and challenge people’s understanding of the word ‘race’. The machine digitally maps the contours of a participants face from a photo and shows you what one may look like as six different races.
“There is only one race, the human one,” quotes Nancy Burson on a promotional flyer, an artist known for using morphing technology to locate missing persons. “There is no gene for race. The Human Race Machine allows us to move beyond differences and arrive at sameness.”
Burson created the Human Race Machine in 2000 for London’s Millennium Dome. Since then, several others have been built and are touring colleges in the United States.
Laura Cole, assistant direc-tor of Adult, Commuter and Transfer services and the person mainly responsible for bringing the Human Race Machine to ETSU, said she first heard about it from a student.
“One of my students told me about it after seeing it featured on Oprah,” Cole said. “So I thought ‘why shouldn’t we bring it here?’ and I found the company that sponsors it and went before the SGA with a proposal to get it.”
Cole hopes that the machine will help students to understand that race is a social construct instead of a biological difference.
“The purpose of it is to challenge the ideas behind race and even the use of the word ‘race’,” she said.
Cassandra Pusateri, a graduate student majoring in counseling said, “The Human Race Machine will give the student body of ETSU the opportunity to broaden their awareness of race while also allowing them to contemplate how their lives would be different if they were classified as a member of another race. It will make a powerful impact on the students who participate.”
The machine will be available all week for students to try free-of-charge, and Cole also encourages students to attend the leadership development seminar on Nov. 8, at 2:30 p.m. in the ARC in the Culp Center. To register for the seminar, e-mail Cole at colelj@etsu.edu.

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