Miya Masaoka exhibited her work in the West Hall Auditorium last Wednesday. She showed interactive installations “Pieces for Plants #6,” “Flotsam,” and “Open Fields” as well as the experimental video “Adventures of the Solitary Bee.”
The first work, “Pieces for Plants #6,” consisted of a philodendron with electrodes running to a computer. Electrical activity in the plant caused sound to play from speakers. Masaoka asked a volunteer from the audience to interact with the plant. When he came on stage, the plant emitted a loud and high pitched sound and then, as he moved further away, the plant appeared to relax. Both the volunteer and Masaoka experimented by moving closer to the plant to excite it and then calmed the plant by moving away. They succeeded in getting closer and closer until they could touch the plant without the loud audio response.
This work successfully explored the relationship between humans and plants. Many people have some kind of relationship with a plant or had one when they were a child. The plant’s reaction to the viewer’s movements on stage effectively showed this relationship as one between living organisms rather than between a human and an inanimate object. The idea of a plant expressing an emotion creates a paradigm shift in how humans relate to their environment.
“Flotsam” digitally reprocessed the sounds Masaoka played on the Koto. The reprocessing created an interesting sound environment for the passive audience but grew monotonous. The exhibit would have been more effective if a viewer could experiment with creating sounds. Mapping sounds other than Koto strings would have enhanced the exhibit above the computer-mediated processing of the existing sound.
Masaoka played the laser Koto in “Open Fields.” She plucked one of four rows of lasers to create koto sounds and a beautiful burst of light at her fingertips. The movement of her body to different parts of the laser made the performance very dynamic. The juxtaposition of lasers with a traditional Japanese instrument emphasized the creation of sound using two different technological methods.
An element of traditional Japanese music connecting the traditional instrument and the modern lasers would have made the piece more effective. Masaoka could use her classical composer background to produce pleasing sounds, rather than only the experimental juxtaposition of Koto sounds. The more traditional music would integrate well with the beauty of plucking the lasers.
“Adventures of the Solitary Bee” anthropomorphized the bee’s role in a hierarchical society. The video opened with swarms of bees on a honeycomb, and text explaining the role of the menial workers who live vicariously through a queen to whom they feed super-food. The bees slaving over the queen alluded to the human lower class producing wealth for the upper class.
The next segment of the video showed bees crawling on a naked female body. The text superimposed on the female body about the ambiguously gendered drones elicited questions about gender roles in society. The drones, while technically female with an X chromosome, ejaculate sperm into the queen, causing them to instantly die as their abdomens explode. The drones who do not ejaculate are outcast from the hive. The bees on the naked body reinforced the isolation of the outcast bee. Some bees climbed up the body, but then slid down when they could not climb all the way.
The diversity of Masaoka’s work created an interesting exhibition. Sound art created from the plant alluded to some deep philosophical issues relating to life. The video provided a great transition while Masaoka set up for the second part of her exhibit. Her playing of the Koto and then the laser Koto provided a lively demonstration of her work. Masaoka created an interesting exhibition worth seeing.
