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Heidi Kumao: Misbehaving: Performative Media Machines Act Out

Looking at the installation work created by artist Heidi Kumao sparks an uncanny sense of déjà vu, as if you're revisiting a moment from the past, but one you can't quite place. That's due in part to the fact that her work seems to have been cobbled together from the abandoned toys, children's furniture, dolls, and mechanical gizmos found in an old attic. She's especially fascinated by the cinematic toys of the 19th century--the zoetrope, for example--along with the basic mechanics that make cinema so magical.

"I'm interested in simple uses of technology, and I value the use of recognizable, common ordinary and everyday gestures, motions, and mechanization to talk about more complex things," explains Kumao, who did her graduate work at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and now lives and teaches in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Although she was studying photography, she immediately abandoned static images, first in favor of image sequences, then animations, and finally sculptural pieces that included moving images in some form. "Just making movies doesn't feel physical enough," she continues, offering an explanation for her particular penchant, "and just making objects doesn't seem seductive enough." Instead, Kumao favors her unique hybrid form and that enchanted alchemy generated by animating the inanimate.

Since 1991, Kumao has been making a series of projects that she calls "Cinema Machines." In each, she transforms a household item by installing a mechanism for projecting images. For example, in Kept (1993), for example, Kumao combines a cabinet equipped with a projecting machine which projects images down into a box that rests on a coffee table. The sequence shows a woman sweeping, but because the sequence is actually a 12-frame loop, the woman appears to move methodically, "caught," as Kumao says, "in this endless task, fighting entropy." Other Cinema Machines include the same basic elements and reference Freudian notions of repetition and the workings of the psyche. Indeed, in describing these projects, Kumao has written, "By exposing the physical apparatus that drives the bodies into action, I draw a parallel between this machinery and the mechanisms of our unconscious."

Kumao's current work-in-progress pushes even further into this terrain. Titled Misbehaving: Performative Machines Act Out, the project will consist of three female robot-like figures. Two of the robotic performers are pairs of young girls' legs; outfitted with video screens and sensors, the legs will move in response to the presence of viewers. A third robotic performer will consist of a pair of legs with a screen standing in for the girl's body. "She'll walk between two projecting machines," explains Kumao. "It's as if she's walking between two people who don't speak to each other, and she interprets as a go-between. It might be two parents, or two politicians. She'll travel across a large space, and spectators will get to see whatever part of the narrative she gets to see."

Key aspects of the project for Kumao include the performative qualities of the robots, the fact that they misbehave, and that they're female. While some might link the doll-like aspects of the work to the work of artist Hans Bellmer, Kumao sees her art practice aligned more with French photographer, scientist, and inventor Etienne-Jules Marey, known for designing and building devices to study motion and ultimately creating a hybrid cultural form that fused science and art. Thomas Edison and his life-sized robot doll, Eve--one of the many robots constructed at the turn of the last century--is another kindred spirit. Kumao prefers these more primitive automatons because they embody a different sensibility than current robots, which are often aggressive and very male. "Rather than the battle bots or destroy-or-conquer robots, I want to see if there's a way to think about robots that isn't violent. I want to use the technology to convey psychological complexity and to create a more poetic robot-making."

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THIS PROJECT'S CATEGORIES: Emerging Fields > Robotics | Asian Themes | Science & Technology | 2002