Clone Skin

What affirms that one exists?
DNA, memory, a name?
Or identifying fire hydrants in a CAPTCHA test?
In the old tale Painted Skin, a creature being sketches a human form upon a sheet of skin, dons it, and thus moves among people as one of them.
Our sense of self is unsettled through relations with others and entanglements with the world; concepts that once seemed clear shift, word by word. Perhaps the condition of existence is not inscribed in the body’s boundaries, but emerges only in each moment of recognition, or misrecognition, by others, as though one must ceaselessly submit proof of being.
The story of the creature and the borrowed skin pries open the fissure between identity and form. In an age of sensors and recognition systems, even the category of “human” hovers in ambiguity, continuously negotiated through the protocols of detection.