My current work uses performative installation as a medium to satirise fashionable trends in cutting edge interactive technology and innovative forms of new media art. In parodies of computer touch-screen technology, I playfully interpret hi-tech scientific practices such as bio-mimetics, using my body as a touchpad computer interface and my own bodyhair as an instrument to uncannily create sound.
The Vacanti Earmouse is a controversial bio-mimesis project that has become ingrained in popular mythology. Veering from the grotesque to the ridiculous, fascinating symbioses of man and machine have been created by incorporating computer hardware with cloned living cell tissues. I explore this commodification of human/animal life by designing props for my performances that have an ergonomic machine-like aesthetic with inputs and outputs for processing interaction, but are costumes for myself. Like a machine, parts of my body are objectified as I am used as an automaton for the audience to play with. My aim is to simultaneously surprise and repulse the audience, by letting them discover that the mechanism they play with is actually a living being. The action of touching another person is itself invasive, and a caress can feel equally disgusting or loving depending upon the people involved. This form of interaction between performer and viewer transgresses polite social boundaries and thus exacerbates the sense of awkwardness that is inherently felt by the participants of any performative activity.
The importance of physical touch, intimacy and human intelligence is a dominant theme in my work. As we become more and more technologically sophisticated, we become reliant upon the use of computers, machines and artificial intelligences to communicate socially. I have tried to create a humanistic response to this, one that questions the increased dissociation that we have with other humans and places a renewed emphasis upon the experience of the sense of touch and of ‘real’ human interacti