San Jose Museum of Art

This week I am reviewing a piece from the I Laughed Till I Cried exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Art. The overall theme of the exhibit was technology, globalization, and their consequences. I found this to be extremely befitting for the SJMA being that it is located in the heart of the Silicon Valley, a geographical symbol for technology and innovation. The specific piece that I was drawn to was Tawian-born artist Shih Chieh Huang’s “Twilight Zone,” which had its own darkened corner separate from the other pieces in the exhibit. At first it was difficult to understand what was going on and what the art was supposed to be. After careful examination, however, I was delighted at the intricacies of both the piece itself and the messages it broadcasts.

The piece consists of a collection of both household and commercial products synthesized in such a way to resemble odd futuristic creatures. There were two snail like creatures hanging from the ceiling at the entrance, three pig-like creatures also hanging from the ceiling, and many small ones on the floor which were made up of two highlighters as feet and shopping bags as the torso. Every single “creature” was periodically lit up by flashing blue, white, green, or red LED’s. Also, each creature had different arrangements of periodically inflating and deflating shopping bags. Small electronic fans in the inside of the bag powered the bags inflating and deflating mechanisms. This was a very interesting artistic choice in that the flashing LEDs and the inflating bags seem to suggest a certain type of dynamic liveliness to the creatures. Furthermore, the creatures beeped (due to alarm clock radios built in to their bodies or other little noisy electronic gadgets) and moved around the room. The three pig-like creatures also had a monitor displaying a video of blinking human-like eyes except significantly animated and distorted. It is also important to note that the electronics that powered these constructions were in no way meant to be strategically hidden from the audience, as other art frequently does with their electronics. Rather, the electronics are put in the focus of the piece. All the wires, chargers, and adapters symbolically represented body parts (e.g. the wires as veins, adaptors as eyes) and were highlighted by the artist in this way.

This piece was essentially the amalgamation of uninteresting consumer products that govern and dominate our modern existence, such as household appliances, lights, computer parts, water tubes, and cheap motorized toys. As the description in the museum noted, the creatures resemble a futuristic ecosystem of strange evolutionary adaptations that have arisen from our own present-day lifeless technology. In many ways, this was a critique of our modern society and our reliance on technology, electronics, and consumer products (such as shopping bags). For example, the LED’s were so prominent it reminded me of a miniaturized and exaggerated Tokyo. By stripping these objects of their meaning and transforming them into this somewhat frightening environment, Shih Chieh Huang cautions us to think about the negative consequences of globalization and technology.