MORPHOLOGY
Uteri Party Bots, 2022
From left to right they are:
Monotremata, Uteri Party Bots, 48 x 53 x 20 cm, custom electronics, LEDs and sensors cast in silicon rubber, 2022
Marsupia, Uteri Party Bots, 48 x 28 x 23 cm, custom electronics, LEDs and sensors cast in silicon rubber, 2022
Ungulat, Uteri Party Bots, 48 x 49 x 19 cm, custom electronics, LEDs and sensors cast in silicon rubber, 2022
The Uteri Party Bots are a posse of interactive autonomous beings built to party. The threesome is friendly, interactive, and respond to humans movements and voices. Audiences engage with robotic uteri through touch, light, sound and movement. They are made of custom electronics and LEDs built into and sensors cast in silicon rubber bodies. The sculptures were shown at Monte Vista Projects in LA in September 2022.
The sculptures are part of the Morphology series, a group of works across physical mediums, that observe the ways that the female reproductive system is depicted unscientifically and relegated to the realms of beauty, nature and culture rather than science. I depict disembodied uteri in current cultural contexts such partying.
This project originally arose out of an interest in how the medical community visually depicts gender and sexuality, both now and throughout history. It began in 2002 when I walked into the Columbia University medical library in New York City with the question, "how does the medical community visually depict genders and sexualities?"
I enjoy and find deep humor in building artworks that undermine and question the visual metaphors used in medical illustrations of reproductive systems. I do this by making imagined uteri that are conceived of as independent beings exploring a genderless world. Freeing up the uterus to explore the world independent of the body opens up the imagination to what the reproductive systems are capable of outside of reproduction. The goal is to produce a type of genderless experiences and gender questioning. I like to combine traditional mediums with interactive technologies to raise these questions.
In a series of works called Morphology, I utilize traditional and non-traditional artistic mediums, to create imagined, empathetic, interactive robotic uteri sculptures that present enjoyable and relatable genderless experiences in ungendered worlds. My artwork exposes human constructed binaries by tying together binaries appearing in medical illustration, gender, technology, electricity, movement, and interactivity.
Women's reproductive systems have been personified and taken a life of their own in medical illustration. Inspired by these personifications, I explore through my artwork what defines humanness, as a way to imagine a genderless human experience and a genderless world. Tying together binaries appearing in medical illustration, gender, technology, electricity, movement, and interactivity, my artwork moves beyond binaries, freeing these imagined robotic uteri to explore the world and ungendered entities' capabilities outside of reproduction.
I explore mammalian uteri because gender is reinforced in medical illustrations of reproductive systems. I explore uteri with technology because humans have a history of personifying and placing human cultural signifiers on electronic entities like robots. Humans seem to more easily understand and interact with entities that have familiar categorizations, characteristics, gestures or interactions such as responsiveness to talking and movement. How humans personify, gender, and give life and culture to non-human, non-gendered entities impacts the lenses through which we all see them, and the forms our perceptions of them take.
I bring together uteri, technology and robotics to explore the characteristics, personalities, and personification of these new imagined genderless entities and groups. I seek to explore what humanizes these entities by exploring characteristics and emotions that could make them relatable, empathetic, cool and funny. I use technology to create interactive experiences with the uteri robots to establish their beingness in a new non-gendered world. My artwork is unique because it imagines a world where there is happiness and contentedness in genderless experiences.
A recent example of my work is The Uteri Party Bots, a posse of interactive autonomous beings built to party. The threesome is friendly, interactive, and respond to humans movements and voices. Audiences engage with the robotic uteri through interactive sensors including touch, light and sound. The uteri are made of custom electronics, sensors and LEDs built into them. They were originally sculpted in clay, around which I created a plaster mold. Then I cast silicon rubber in the plaster mold and included the electronics.
For at least the last 400 years of medical illustration, men's reproductive systems were represented scientifically within the context of the body, while women's reproductive systems were consistently represented outside the human body in cultural settings such as with beautiful home decor, floral or natural settings, or evoked the shapes of female clothing such as embodying the shape of a skirt.
In the example below, a woman is shown with beautifully styled hair, seated on decorative fabric placed on an ornate chair.
It is a rare depiction of the female reproductive system in the context of the body, shown within the cultural contexts and expectations of women. Why was the male reproductive system depicted scientifically and the female reproductive system depicted culturally?
Traditional vases were used as metaphors for the uterus and were sometimes depicted with etchings or paintings on the side such as one would find on an ancient Greek vase, thus showing them as objects of culture, beauty, and nature rather than science. Illustrations show, for example, a uterus in the shape of a vase [Marshall's Physiology of Reproduction, Volume 2, Francis Marshall, 328, 1990].
Because the uteri are depicted without the human form, they raise questions around the independence and autonomy of uteri. One might ask what happens to a uterus alone in the world outside the human body?
Devoid of their scientific, human bodily context, female reproductive systems are disembodied, disconnected from humanness and dehumanized in medical illustration. However, at the same time, born out of disembodiment, they emerge as independent creatures existing out in the world. Through cultural settings, visual metaphors and attributed gestures, women's reproductive systems become personified and take on a life of their own. My artwork uses the depictions of autonomous reproductive systems as a launching off point for an experience of what autonomous genderless humanness could be.
My artworks serve to demonstrate the ways humans ascribe attributes and categorizations to non-gendered, non-human entities to bring users into a comfortable experience of genderlessness. The robotic uteri in the Morphology series are presented in a robotic form because of the human tendency to personify and place human cultural signifiers on electronic entities like robots. Humans seem to more easily understand and empathize with entities that have familiar categorizations, characteristics or interactions such as responsiveness to talking, gesture and movement. How humans personify, gender, and give life and culture to non-human, non-gendered beings is a reflection on and serves to define humanness. The pairing of gender, beingness and technology in my artwork pairs human binary constructions with the way humans personify non-human technological entities.
Humans makes sense of and gain comfort in the world by ascribing categorizations on humans such as gender binaries, and by ascribing human characteristics on robots. However, the categorizations and binaries upon which both humans and electronic entities are established have always been easily destabilized and questions around what is innate endure. I explore what defines humanness, and what defines it outside of gender as a way to imagine a genderless human experience and a genderless world. I build uteri that are conceived to explore other possibilities without the purpose or onus of reproduction. Freeing up the uterus to explore the world independent of the body opens up the imagination to what ungendered reproductive systems, and by association ungendered people, are capable of outside of reproduction.
Marsupial
Montremate
Ungulate
OTHER WORK IN THE MORPHOLOGY SERIES
2023
marsupial
2022
carnivora
carnivora, marsupial, montreme, ungulate books
2002
rodentia
rodentia responded to touch with light.
monotreme
ungulate
carnivora
From left to right they are:
Monotremata, Uteri Party Bots, 48 x 53 x 20 cm, custom electronics, LEDs and sensors cast in silicon rubber, 2022
Marsupia, Uteri Party Bots, 48 x 28 x 23 cm, custom electronics, LEDs and sensors cast in silicon rubber, 2022
Ungulat, Uteri Party Bots, 48 x 49 x 19 cm, custom electronics, LEDs and sensors cast in silicon rubber, 2022
The Uteri Party Bots are a posse of interactive autonomous beings built to party. The threesome is friendly, interactive, and respond to humans movements and voices. Audiences engage with robotic uteri through touch, light, sound and movement. They are made of custom electronics and LEDs built into and sensors cast in silicon rubber bodies. The sculptures were shown at Monte Vista Projects in LA in September 2022.
The sculptures are part of the Morphology series, a group of works across physical mediums, that observe the ways that the female reproductive system is depicted unscientifically and relegated to the realms of beauty, nature and culture rather than science. I depict disembodied uteri in current cultural contexts such partying.
This project originally arose out of an interest in how the medical community visually depicts gender and sexuality, both now and throughout history. It began in 2002 when I walked into the Columbia University medical library in New York City with the question, "how does the medical community visually depict genders and sexualities?"
I enjoy and find deep humor in building artworks that undermine and question the visual metaphors used in medical illustrations of reproductive systems. I do this by making imagined uteri that are conceived of as independent beings exploring a genderless world. Freeing up the uterus to explore the world independent of the body opens up the imagination to what the reproductive systems are capable of outside of reproduction. The goal is to produce a type of genderless experiences and gender questioning. I like to combine traditional mediums with interactive technologies to raise these questions.
In a series of works called Morphology, I utilize traditional and non-traditional artistic mediums, to create imagined, empathetic, interactive robotic uteri sculptures that present enjoyable and relatable genderless experiences in ungendered worlds. My artwork exposes human constructed binaries by tying together binaries appearing in medical illustration, gender, technology, electricity, movement, and interactivity.
Women's reproductive systems have been personified and taken a life of their own in medical illustration. Inspired by these personifications, I explore through my artwork what defines humanness, as a way to imagine a genderless human experience and a genderless world. Tying together binaries appearing in medical illustration, gender, technology, electricity, movement, and interactivity, my artwork moves beyond binaries, freeing these imagined robotic uteri to explore the world and ungendered entities' capabilities outside of reproduction.
I explore mammalian uteri because gender is reinforced in medical illustrations of reproductive systems. I explore uteri with technology because humans have a history of personifying and placing human cultural signifiers on electronic entities like robots. Humans seem to more easily understand and interact with entities that have familiar categorizations, characteristics, gestures or interactions such as responsiveness to talking and movement. How humans personify, gender, and give life and culture to non-human, non-gendered entities impacts the lenses through which we all see them, and the forms our perceptions of them take.
I bring together uteri, technology and robotics to explore the characteristics, personalities, and personification of these new imagined genderless entities and groups. I seek to explore what humanizes these entities by exploring characteristics and emotions that could make them relatable, empathetic, cool and funny. I use technology to create interactive experiences with the uteri robots to establish their beingness in a new non-gendered world. My artwork is unique because it imagines a world where there is happiness and contentedness in genderless experiences.
A recent example of my work is The Uteri Party Bots, a posse of interactive autonomous beings built to party. The threesome is friendly, interactive, and respond to humans movements and voices. Audiences engage with the robotic uteri through interactive sensors including touch, light and sound. The uteri are made of custom electronics, sensors and LEDs built into them. They were originally sculpted in clay, around which I created a plaster mold. Then I cast silicon rubber in the plaster mold and included the electronics.
For at least the last 400 years of medical illustration, men's reproductive systems were represented scientifically within the context of the body, while women's reproductive systems were consistently represented outside the human body in cultural settings such as with beautiful home decor, floral or natural settings, or evoked the shapes of female clothing such as embodying the shape of a skirt.
In the example below, a woman is shown with beautifully styled hair, seated on decorative fabric placed on an ornate chair.
It is a rare depiction of the female reproductive system in the context of the body, shown within the cultural contexts and expectations of women. Why was the male reproductive system depicted scientifically and the female reproductive system depicted culturally?
Traditional vases were used as metaphors for the uterus and were sometimes depicted with etchings or paintings on the side such as one would find on an ancient Greek vase, thus showing them as objects of culture, beauty, and nature rather than science. Illustrations show, for example, a uterus in the shape of a vase [Marshall's Physiology of Reproduction, Volume 2, Francis Marshall, 328, 1990].
Because the uteri are depicted without the human form, they raise questions around the independence and autonomy of uteri. One might ask what happens to a uterus alone in the world outside the human body?
Devoid of their scientific, human bodily context, female reproductive systems are disembodied, disconnected from humanness and dehumanized in medical illustration. However, at the same time, born out of disembodiment, they emerge as independent creatures existing out in the world. Through cultural settings, visual metaphors and attributed gestures, women's reproductive systems become personified and take on a life of their own. My artwork uses the depictions of autonomous reproductive systems as a launching off point for an experience of what autonomous genderless humanness could be.
My artworks serve to demonstrate the ways humans ascribe attributes and categorizations to non-gendered, non-human entities to bring users into a comfortable experience of genderlessness. The robotic uteri in the Morphology series are presented in a robotic form because of the human tendency to personify and place human cultural signifiers on electronic entities like robots. Humans seem to more easily understand and empathize with entities that have familiar categorizations, characteristics or interactions such as responsiveness to talking, gesture and movement. How humans personify, gender, and give life and culture to non-human, non-gendered beings is a reflection on and serves to define humanness. The pairing of gender, beingness and technology in my artwork pairs human binary constructions with the way humans personify non-human technological entities.
Humans makes sense of and gain comfort in the world by ascribing categorizations on humans such as gender binaries, and by ascribing human characteristics on robots. However, the categorizations and binaries upon which both humans and electronic entities are established have always been easily destabilized and questions around what is innate endure. I explore what defines humanness, and what defines it outside of gender as a way to imagine a genderless human experience and a genderless world. I build uteri that are conceived to explore other possibilities without the purpose or onus of reproduction. Freeing up the uterus to explore the world independent of the body opens up the imagination to what ungendered reproductive systems, and by association ungendered people, are capable of outside of reproduction.
Marsupial
Montremate
Ungulate
OTHER WORK IN THE MORPHOLOGY SERIES
2023
marsupial
2022
carnivora
carnivora, marsupial, montreme, ungulate books
2002
rodentia
rodentia responded to touch with light.
monotreme
ungulate
carnivora