Micha Cardenas and Elle Mehrmand : Mixed Relations (1)

These images portray the technology used in the series mixed relations, a collaboration between Micha Cárdenas and Elle Mehrmand. mixed relations consists of a series of performances and workshops that explore the relations between bodies and technology within mixed realities. The performances focus on using the body as an instrument to produce live audio, linking the physical and virtual worlds. The goal is to look at bodies in relation to each other, as well as in relation to the technologies which extend and multiply them, sonically, visually and physically. The performances explore themes of affective tension andanticipation, techno-fetishism, and D.I.Y. cyborg bodies.

Micha Cardenas and Elle Mehrmand : Mixed Relations (5)

The wires hanging from our bodies conjure at once torture, medicine and DIY open technologies. The blinking lights both hint at the mechanical repetition and the scopic pleasure in seeing, the enjoyment of brightly colored pixels petting our retinas and shimmering across our skin. Biometric technology can be seen as a post-contemporary pharmakon, seeming to decentralize knowledge of the body, but quantifying and shaping the form of that knowledge, presupposing its usages and facilitating surveillance. We acknowledge the problematics of the economies which bring us these devices while embracing our potential to open our bodies up to new hybrid experiences of flesh and electricity.

Micha Cardenas and Elle Mehrmand : Mixed Relations (4)

Here, the devices act as a pharmakon, both remedy and poison, oscillating between the two, both/and simultaneously. In looking at technological mediation of relationships, we see both the failure of the technology, adding distance between us, hearing noise in the recording, transmitting out pain, and the new depths opened by the technologies, hearing each other's heartbeats, bridging worlds, providing the raw excitement of the hack.

Micha Cardenas and Elle Mehrmand : Mixed Relations (3)

In technésexual the performers commit playful erotic acts in physical and virtual space simultaneously, using devices to amplify the sound of their heartbeats for the two audiences. At the Hemispheric Institute for performance art and politics in Bogota, Colombia, an analog stethoscope was connected to a piezo sensor to amplify the actual live heartbeat sound. At GLAMFA, in Long Beach, CA, an electrocardiogram was used to monitor the heart rate, playing a recording of the heartbeat at the correct rate using Puredata. The sound is used here to bridge the two spaces, finding ways of exploring the space between realities.

Micha Cardenas and Elle Mehrmand : Mixed Relations (2)

slapshock consists of a performance with a pain-sharing device, exploring symbiotic relationships. A transdermal electro nerve stimulation unit was wired to a piezo sensor through a Freeduino, creating a device which would send a painful electric shock to the other performer when each performer slapped themselves.

Christina McPhee after Carolee Schneeman: MEAT OIL JOY PAINT (2)

MEAT OIL JOY PAINT

a video installation by Christina McPhee

2010

A tribute to Carolee Schneemann's MEAT JOY (1964) set in petroleum fields and dipped in red paint...bodies/becoming/petroleum, how to rebel? 

MEAT OIL JOY PAINT online video 

Shot at the San Ardo Petroleum Fields, Monterey County, California;

Christina McPhee is a visual and media artist based in the central coast of California and San Francisco.Forthcoming solo exhibitions include emptycube, Lisbon 2011.Recent press includes the cover image (film still, SALT 2004) and Ella Mudie's feature article, "The Spectacle of Seismicity" for LEONARDO, MIT Press Journal, April 2010.FMI  Silverman Gallery, San Francisco.

Christina McPhee after Carolee Schneemann: MEAT OIL JOY PAINT (1)

MEAT OIL JOY PAINT

A video installation by Christina McPhee 2010 now at BABY GRAND NYC  June 8 to July 20, 2010

A tribute to Carolee Schneemann's MEAT JOY (1964) set in the oil fields and dipped in red paint. Shot at the San Ardo Petroleum Fields, Monterey County, California.

MEAT OIL JOY PAINT (Tesserae-Vermillion) 2010