Objet Petit A

PRACTICUM FOR ANNIE WAN'S GENERAL EXAMINATION FROM PROFESSOR COUPE

Lacan describes the concept of "objet petit a" as the object of desire that we seek but can never find. It operates as a symbol of our desire, thereby unattainable in any actual thing. To take an example of this in film, Luis Bunuel’s “Cet obscur objet du desir” portrays a man’s desire for a woman, played by two different actresses, who remains perpetually out of his reach. Both in content and form, Bunuel captures Lacan’s concept. From Velazquez’s “Rokeby Venus” to Orlan’s “The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan”, Lynn Hershman’s “Lorna” and Vito Acconci’s “Undertone”, artists have used an array of media to represent the complex interplay of art, desire and representation.

In your art practice, you intersect performance, mechatronics and locative media. You value audience interaction and collaboration, negotiating the relationship between human and machine. In such systems, the relationship between subject and artwork is in a constant state of flux, an open system that lacks a certain or stable outcome. Whereas it is possible to leave such situations unresolved, there is a substantial difference between a system of elements and a systematic synthesis of content and form that provides a poetic experience. Your general exam practicum is to construct a system in which such a relationship is contextualized as a “love story”. It should be a quick and exquisite sketch, in which you construct a mechatronic system that algorithmically investigates the full metaphorical complexity of this dialog.

My answer:

Objet Petit A is a robotics performance, a robot with big lips looks for hes (his/ her) desirable human, hes responses to different audience in different emotional behaviors. When hes sees heself, hes hesitates & starts to look for hes desirable human again.

Objet Petit A is the iteration of my General Examination for DXARTS, University of Washington

Objet Petit A have been exhibited for 1 month in October Contemporary 2008, Hong Kong.

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