Instructor

Bogna Konior, Jung Hyun Moon

Type

Physical Computing

Created with

Arduino, ChatGPT, Adobe Audition

Time

September 2023 – May 2024

Despite the celebratory rhetoric of ‘Women hold up half of the sky’ on women’s liberation since the 1950s, Chinese women have long borne the dual burden of reproductive and public-sector labor. It’s thus vital to place this issue at the crossroad of societal expectations regarding women’s reproductive roles and the grand narrative of the countries’ technological and economical prosperity.

“New Era Women” features a kinetic installation consisting of a printing machine that prints real-time AI-generated pro-reproduction slogans onto a piece of dough, which will then be sheeted and distorted by a manual dough-sheeter machine through audience interaction. The megaphone loops a selection of AI-generated and real-life pro-reproduction slogans.

Through the industrialized Chinese-style kitchen setting and the labor required from the audience, the installation questions the unfair burdens placed on Chinese women that are rhetorically rationalized by public discourses, prompting the audience to think about a fairer distribution of labor.