2004 Rockefeller New Media Foundation Proposal

Abstract

Transformers will be an installation of absurd devices, which act as a caricature and critique of the promise of new technologies and cultural obsessions with youth, immortality, wealth, health, sexuality, and beauty. Just as more technologies are marketed as 'personal', this piece will be a collection of personalized Rube-Goldberg-like helper/self-help devices organized like a cross between a gym and a tech tradeshow. Devices will be hybrid forms of visceral materials, quasi-familiar objects, and technologies, with a visual aesthetic that aims for the horrifically beautiful. All devices will operate in a personalized way. Some devices will interact with external data from the Internet and some will require the viewer's bodily participation to operate. I hope Transformers will reflect the humor, anxiety, and social transformation that our cultural faith in such real devices and technologies represents.