Reprogramming Perception – TECH+ART | Genius: Picasso

I like to challenge my audience with
sensory experiences that can almost feel
threatening go is use hair spits semen
blood why do you find it disgusting why
is that normal why are things so
sanitized I think as an artist I’m
really interested in all things
sensory especially as it relates to
perception and with things like virtual
reality and augmented reality it’s so
interesting that you can kind of
reprogram that perception so the empathy
machines are a set of headsets
that allow two people to swap vision
they’re equipped with tiny cameras that
they use for drones actually and video
glasses and they’re programmed with
radio frequency to swap feeds so you
could look out through my eyes and I
would look out through yours when you
look at something light bounces off that
object and reflects into your retina and
it becomes process as the image but when
you smell something a molecule of that
substance binds into your receptor and
in my mind becomes a part of you the
project human perfume started very
ambitious leave with the goal of growing
a plant that could always create the
scent profile of someone that had loved
and lost and it turns out it was a very
complicated process but along the way I
learned a lot of other techniques which
allowed me to create a chemical
re-emission of someone smell first I
take someone’s shirt or garment that
they’ve been wearing for a really long
time and then I cut strips of it that
are the stinkiest and I put them in a
solvent and then I distill it from very
traditional ways like with last where
there’s something so inherently sensual
about smell I think in the current
landscape that we’re in it’s really
important to come back to these sensual
experiences I really love reviewing the
invisible actually everything from the
microscopic scale to the telescopic
scale with microbial pieces that are
self-portraits that I groove my body I
was really interested in forces that Co
make me beyond myself I was talking to a
microbiologist and he was telling me
about the microbiome for the first time
and how so blown away for every ten
cells in your body
nine of them are not your own they’re
invisible but basically live on every
surface of your body and influence
everything from your behavior to your
mood and it’s such an integral part of
who you are I started to grow my own
cultures just to see what they were what
do they look like from bit my armpit
what do they smell like what did they
look like from my belly button what does
it look like from my partner you use
agar which is a gelatin and put in a
bunch of nutrients and you set into a
jelly into a petri dish I would dip a
sterile q-tip in DI water and then
flayed it and then you incubate it which
means you keep it nice and toasty at the
perfect temperature that it wants to be
at I had always thought of myself as a
nature versus nurture kind of paradigm
but the fact that a totally different
organism could also Co make me was
really fascinating I think it’s
especially important in the
technological landscape to include
artists because you know scientists and
technologists strive so hard to make the
world a better place and so much of what
I strive to do is ask what is better her
who is better
who is it better for is it better for
you for me for a child from and these
are really charged questions that I
think artists
can fearless Lee ask when they used
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