(Ming)Yiming Yang

The process of mRNA splicing pertains to manually cutting and pasting pieces of our cells’ information transmission codes. Spiders perceive sound through their legs. This project enquired as to what would occur if we built on human perception via technology, incorporating a human within a synthetic creature.

Splice enmeshes a human organism with a robotic body, thereby generating a cyborg, without interfering with genetics.

What is a biological body?

The point at which a human and a robot are infused into a coherent and indistinguishable entity – a cyborg – may comprise the last stage of evolutionary development. The realisation of such an entity as an evolutionary conclusion may produce emancipation from a range of social inequities, countering gender, race, and sexual inequality and coming to achieve Haraway’s notion.

This installation challenges common notions of the interlinks between and among human nature, the natural world, and technology. It also explores the ways that these interlinks impact on our subjectivity and our psyche. It creates a post-human, cyborg-driven scenario set in a transcendent, non-specific time in the future, in which we will be able to select our own organic bodies thanks to technological innovation.

The premise of the present study is that spiders detect sound via their legs. Added to this was the speculative enquiry as to what would occur when human sensory systems are built and improved on by deploying various contemporary technologies.

Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto puts forth the concept of the cyborg as a means of overcoming unequal gender power relations. This study has used the concept of the cyborg as a gender equality tool in developing a human/machine hybridised organism.

Our growing sense of tension and discomfort with nascent technologies and their power to disarm us is amply reflected in the contemporaneous popularity of post-human culture and theory.

For this Virtual Show, I delivered the inner part of the Splice, which would be a VR experience to be consumed inside the installation, as a web VR environment.

A user will embody the Splice I created and interact with the whole space in VR.

https://yimingyang.itch.io/splice

When a physical installation will be possible, the piece will be structured as follows.

The Splice is composed of an interactive unity-based Virtual Reality and sonic environment plus audience-controlled interactive robotics, with a performer leading the experience.

How does it work?

The installation is comprised of two major components.

A robotic, arachnid-shaped human comprises the outer component.

As per Lacan’s notion of ‘the mirror stage’, whereby a conscious subject becomes aware of the threshold of self-consciousness by becoming conscious of its mirrored image, the Splice’s legs will interactively mirror the spectators’ movements.

For the inner component, prior to entering the VR, every spectator will be asked to record a brief sound expression. These recordings are thereafter transferred to a 16-channel speaker system and the sounds will be interconnected with their motion and with the objects in the 3D environment. When wearing VR, they will be a Splice itself (first-person angle) to experience Splice’s world.

The impact of this is one of disorientation insofar as it conveys an experience of notably neutral observation mixed with one of proactive participation.

A 3D creature is unveiled by wearing the VR headset, with the audience embodying the Splice and the creature prompting an experience of self-reflection.

To enhance the sense of physical, multi-sensory interaction, and to replicate the human impact in the VR, air is blown at visitors in congruence with the movements.

(The performer will first lead to show how to use the VR part.)

It is a self-sustained, unpredictable, interactive musical instrument.

It is ambivalent, speculative, silly and unconventional.

Barbie, a recurring figure of our times, the undisputed model of non-real female plastic bodies, becomes an instrument — and she reacts to her body being rearranged in different postures.

It’s a cultural challenge for the user — because this installation is not for passive viewers but for active users — who can’t help but move Barbie’s body parts and generate different sounds.

This is an intentional non-sense design, seeking to generate a familiar and sought-after sense of pure joyfulness, fun, and non-mediated humor.

I pose questions but don’t aim at providing an answer.

Each user will leave with their personal answers and a memory that will stand out against all the inevitable previous interactions with the otherwise dead Barbie.

The bleeps and pulses that Barbie emits are certainly producing a disorienting clash with the crystallized model of a sensual voice that any good looking woman must have according to a still profoundly non-feminist culture.