Artist: Ani Liu
Exhibition title: “Pixelated slaps to the heart, (Remnants of A Search for Ghosts in the Meat Machine)” 2018/2020
Venue: Elijah Wheat Showroom, New York, US
Date: December 1, 2020 – January 31, 2021
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Elijah Wheat Showroom, New York
The ambitious solo exhibition contains nine tanks with the feminist tech-artist, Ani Liu’s embodied volume of water. The aquariums rest upon steel armatures that stand at the artist’s height. The tanks contain submerged and active digital materials, biological artifacts and neurological data that express unique ideas inspired between biological science and technology about human sentience.
Liu, paraphrasing philosopher Marshall McLuhan, explains that “while we shape our technologies, our technologies co-shape us, and this feedback loop is a very important one to examine.” Recent technological innovations allow us to redesign ourselves profoundly— from networked prosthetics and artificial intelligence, to the genetic code of life itself. Can our behaviors be reduced to algorithms? Can our bodies be upgraded with nonorganic integrations? Can sentience itself be manufactured in a lab?
The grid of nine sculptures investigates cognitive personhood from our own machines, our own carbon-life formations. Descartes pondered five centuries ago, well before the Industrial Age and modern medicine: Where does cognition reside? Where does our soul settle?
Liu’s astute research acknowledges that despite acute advances in technology, experts continue to query where the magical material of sentience arises. These sculptures attempt to activate and confront the visceral appearance of the brain as material, while combining biological matter with technology to give way to ulterior consciousness.
“This set of nine sculptures examines personhood from anatomical, psychological, genetic, biochemical, behavioral, algorithmic, personal narrative and memory. In many ways, this installation is an emotional confrontation with being quantifiable,” Liu explains. Screens are submerged in a non-conductive fluid, playing different videos of data from the artist’s brain. Varying screens depict recordings of EEG data of Liu’s brain learning about brains. Others present depictions of the body as data along with an interface of MRI machines. Compelling videos of the artist question what can be known about a person based on a physiological examination of the body vs a digital one. Liu remarks: “We often think of the virtual as separate from the body but there are physical molecules connecting virtual & the physiological, the material and the immaterial, the digital & the molecular, bytes and biology.”
Reflecting on recent events of the pandemic, this relationship between the physical and the digital has become more palpable than ever. The installation includes an update based on Liu’s recent experiences- a never ending stream of COVID related news, an infinite corridor of Zoom, and an attempt to cope with daily unknowns.
Aside from the sculptures and in an office like a cubicle, guests can play a video game “Shapes and Ladders” revealing how systemic racism and sexism can exist in the workplace. Set in the metaphor of a career ladder, players attempt to navigate through an office building rife with challenges. A private link will take a viewer to experience and engage with a prototype challenging their algorithmically biased character to climb the career-ladder ultimately becoming CEO, or not.
Both works will be placed and exhibited in a restored leather tanning facility located directly on the Hudson River in Newburgh, NY hosted by Regal Bag Studios. The exhibition is also included in NADA Miami Online Fair and open on December 1st, 2020 through December 6th, 2020 and continue to run through January 31st, 2021 by appointment. The socially -distant, masked opening reception will take place on December 5th, from Noon to 8:00PM. We welcome reservations.
Ani Liu is an internationally exhibiting research-based artist working at the intersection of art & science. Her work examines the reciprocal relationships between science, technology and their influence on human subjectivity, culture, and identity.
Ani’s work has been exhibited internationally, at the Venice Biennale (forthcoming, Architecture Biennale 2020), Ars Electronica, the Queens Museum Biennial, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Asian Art Museum, MIT Museum, MIT Media Lab, Mana Contemporary, Harvard University, and Shenzhen Design Society. She’s been featured on National Geographic, VICE, Mashable, Gizmodo, TED, Core77, PBS, PCMag, FOX and WIRED.
She is the winner of the Princeton Arts Fellowship (2019-2021), the Virginia Groot Foundation Fellowship (2020), the S&R Washington Prize (2018), the YouFab Global Creative Awards (1st place, 2018), the Biological Art & Design Award (2017). Ani has a B.A. from Dartmouth College, a Masters of Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and a Master of Science from MIT Media Lab.
She is passionate about integrating multidisciplinary approaches to art making, and is currently teaching at Princeton University. She has previously taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and is on critique panels at Harvard, Dartmouth, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, NYU, UNC Charlotte, Pratt, Parsons.
Ani Liu, Pixelated Slaps to the Heart (Remnants of A Search for Ghosts in the Meat Machine) 1, 2020, Welded oxidized steel with a glass vitrine (see disc.), 65 x 29 x 21 in
Ani Liu, Pixelated Slaps to the Heart (Remnants of A Search for Ghosts in the Meat Machine) 1, 2020, Welded oxidized steel with a glass vitrine (see disc.), 65 x 29 x 21 in
Ani Liu, Pixelated Slaps to the Heart (Remnants of A Search for Ghosts in the Meat Machine) 1, 2020, Welded oxidized steel with a glass vitrine (see disc.), 65 x 29 x 21 in
Ani Liu, Pixelated Slaps to the Heart (Remnants of A Search for Ghosts in the Meat Machine) 1, 2020, Welded oxidized steel with a glass vitrine (see disc.), 65 x 29 x 21 in
Ani Liu, Pixelated Slaps to the Heart (Remnants of A Search for Ghosts in the Meat Machine) 1, 2020, Welded oxidized steel with a glass vitrine (see disc.), 65 x 29 x 21 in
Ani Liu, Pixelated Slaps to the Heart (Remnants of A Search for Ghosts in the Meat Machine) 1, 2020, Welded oxidized steel with a glass vitrine (see disc.), 65 x 29 x 21 in
Ani Liu, Pixelated Slaps to the Heart (Remnants of A Search for Ghosts in the Meat Machine) 1, 2020, Welded oxidized steel with a glass vitrine (see disc.), 65 x 29 x 21 in
Ani Liu, Pixelated Slaps to the Heart (Remnants of A Search for Ghosts in the Meat Machine) 1, 2020, Welded oxidized steel with a glass vitrine (see disc.), 65 x 29 x 21 in
Ani Liu, Pixelated Slaps to the Heart (Remnants of A Search for Ghosts in the Meat Machine) 1, 2020, Welded oxidized steel with a glass vitrine (see disc.), 65 x 29 x 21 in
Ani Liu, Pixelated Slaps to the Heart (Remnants of A Search for Ghosts in the Meat Machine) 1, 2020, Welded oxidized steel with a glass vitrine (see disc.), 65 x 29 x 21 in
Ani Liu, Pixelated Slaps to the Heart (Remnants of A Search for Ghosts in the Meat Machine) 1, 2020, Welded oxidized steel with a glass vitrine (see disc.), 65 x 29 x 21 in
Ani Liu, Pixelated Slaps to the Heart (Remnants of A Search for Ghosts in the Meat Machine) 1, 2020, Welded oxidized steel with a glass vitrine (see disc.), 65 x 29 x 21 in
Ani Liu, Pixelated Slaps to the Heart (Remnants of A Search for Ghosts in the Meat Machine) 1, 2020, Welded oxidized steel with a glass vitrine (see disc.), 65 x 29 x 21 in
Ani Liu, Pixelated Slaps to the Heart (Remnants of A Search for Ghosts in the Meat Machine) 1, 2020, Welded oxidized steel with a glass vitrine (see disc.), 65 x 29 x 21 in
Ani Liu, Pixelated Slaps to the Heart (Remnants of A Search for Ghosts in the Meat Machine) 1, 2020, Welded oxidized steel with a glass vitrine (see disc.), 65 x 29 x 21 in
