Shu Lea Cheang: Babylove: Drive Me Drive
Me Crazy
Organized by National Taiwan Museum of fine Arts
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December
1 to January 13, 2007
Press
preview, Wednesday, November 29, 2006 from noon to 2pm
Opening,
Thursday November 30, 2006, 6pm
The
Chelsea Art Museum, Home of the Miotte Foundation, is
pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibition
called, Baby Love, developed by celebrated
Taiwanese artist, Shu Lea Cheang. The exhibition
runs from December 1, 2006 to January 13, 2007. A
press briefing will be held on Wednesday 29, November,
from noon to 2 pm.
Baby
Love is a wifi mobile
installation that consists of 6 large autonomously mobile
teacups (67 inches in diameter)
with 6 clone babies (each 28 inches tall). The
teacups are modeled after spinning carnival rides, except
that the soundtrack of love songs can be uploaded by
public via the web at http://babylove.biz
and directly to the teacups, where they are coded as ME
(memory and emotion) data for the clone babies. When the
museum visitor takes a teacup ride with the babies, the ME
data is retrieved, jumbled and eventually crashes.
Baby Love situates human and baby clone riders in a
perpetual spin which fuses the familiar fairground
iconography with contemporary “remix” pop culture
Baby Love is
the second installment of Shu Lea Cheang's
Locker Baby Project which also includes Baby Play (presented at
NTT [ICC], Tokyo in 2001) and
Baby Work (to
be realized). Referring to Ryu Murakami's noted novel,
Coin Locker Babies (1980), the updated locker babies
are born out of Tokyo coin lockers by DPT (Dolly Polly
Transgency) with genes extracted from deep-sea pearls. The
“biobot” locker babies are the clone generation of our
sci-fi fantasy reality, entrusted to receive, store,
transmit and negotiate human memory and emotions. The
teacups are modeled after the spinning teacup of the
old-time playground and as such have a somewhat nostalgic
presence that collides with the cloned baby.
The baby adorned with a locker key, a LED display
with random locker numbers, is installed with a baby
machine (a Mac mini with 802.11 wifi connection). The
spinning wheel on the teacup is wired with sensors. The
sensor data (direction and speed) sent via RS 232 and
802.11 to the baby commands the baby machine whose sound
engine (written in Max MSP), receives and processes the
MP3 database. When the teacup is in motion, its direction
and speed vary the shuffle and rearrange the love songs in
the baby engine. The teacup's bottom plate, inflated with
a silicon tube, encloses a circular strip of contact
bumper so that the teacups can safely bump into each
other, in a gentler version of the fairground bumper cars.
When teacups collide, the baby engine is informed,
sound files are exchanged and remixed and played back into
the web stream.
In
Baby Love, Shu Lea Cheang continues her
exploration of our contemporary obsessive immersion in the
virtual life of the internet and its impact on cultural
practices. It is an installation which mixes nostalgia for
a seemingly simpler age with the technically boggling
interactive technology of the connections on the net,
Cheang seems to be asking where will the ever new
frontiers of the web take us?
Will it lead to an expanded universe of knowledge
or to a frightening scenario of dehumanization, where even
the emotions of a baby can be programmed at will?
Love
songs can be uploaded, deposited, recycled for the clone
babies of the installation at http://babylove.biz
where the viewer can also find complete technical
descriptions of the installation and download images.
Panel
Discussion: Saturday,
December 2 from 2:30 – 3:30 pm.
Shu Lea Cheang will present Babylove and answer
questions from the public about the project.
Baby
Love was initially produced by the National Taiwan
Museum of Fine Arts commission with support from Council
for Culture Affairs, Taiwan in collaboration with SQV
Design International, Tatung University, Mechanical
Engineering department, eLife Techonology Innovation
Center, Sony Computer Science Laboratory Paris. US
exhibition liaison: Taipei Cultural Center [TECO], New
York.
For
More Information go to:
www.chelseaartmuseum.org
www.babylove.biz
Or
Contact:
Christopher
Longfellow,
Press
Officer,
Chelsea
Art Museum
Home
of the Miotte Foundation
,556
West 22nd Street
,(At
11th Avenue)
,New
York, NY 10011
212-255-0719
x 108
chris@chelseaartmuseum.org
Upcoming
at the Chelsea Art Museum, Home of the Miotte Foundation:
INSIGHT:
Michael Bevilacqua – DUI (Drawing under the
Influence)
December
19 – February 24, 2007
Acclaimed painter, Michael Bevilacqua, will
present his first drawing show.
Some thirty drawings, originally used to transfer
images to his highly complex paintings surfaces, will be
shown in the exhibition and will offer a unique insight
into Bevilacqua’s working method.
A catalogue will accompany the show.
In collaboration with Galleri
Faurschou.
For further
information, please contact Taipei Cultural Center at: (212) 697-6188; or
www.tpecc.org
