Augmented Reality Interface ++ Erotic Poetics
Dr Chang Gao
Project title:
Using Supernormal Stimuli and Eroticism in the Production of Artwork: An Experiment in Countering Cultural Hegemony in Public Space
This practice-led research engages with the fields of psychology, politics, philosophy, sexuality, and fine art. It critically examines the use of sexuality in the production of artwork by specifically considering evolutionary psychology’s theory of supernormal stimuli and eroticism, to potentially combat or disrupt political repression. The research further questions if the use of supernormal stimuli could subversively reveal issues and even reshape the existing social-political and cultural issues such as censorship and post-colonialism in public space.
When shown in an exhibition space, Augmented Reality Interface Erotic Poetics invites the viewers to scan the location-based GPS QR code from a specific location within an exhibition space. The viewers can interact with short clips of videos within the background of a public space/semi-public gallery space. The hologram installation Emotional Encounter and the sculpture Intimate Fantasy each remind the viewer of their subaltern identities: the visible and invisible layers of hologram installation Emotional Encounter, the distorted and ambiguous shape of sculpture Book of Disquiet, together with augmented reality interface with the reality, explore the result of self-censorship.
My research aims to empower politically repressed communities to express their silenced voice. Governments worldwide censor voices and, unheard people become invisible. My project attempts to give form to unknown desire and to encourage people to verbalise their feelings. This research proposes that the energy induced from this desire represents an individual’s specific status and position, which could potentially unlock a hidden subterranean layer of bodily affect. This could allow politically repressed communities’ voices to be heard as a result of the bodily affects evoked from my work. My work gives form to submerged, repressed or even unknown desire and it allows an opportunity to articulate these in public space. In this sense it is unleashing and it offers more than a feeling of fantasy. While the sense of being excluded from the public sphere is also acknowledged, this project aims to create an expression which could go under the radar of a government’s control of representation, and which seeks to counteract the patriarchal, hegemonic, post-colonial and anti-erotic world.
Conversation: where critical friends of itinerant space are invited to comment on journal submissions as part of an ongoing research dialogue.