Itinerant Space Publication: Augmented Reality Interface ++ Erotic Poetics Chang Gao

Contribution for Itinerant Space:

Augmented Reality Interface Erotic Poetics_2023

Project title: Using Supernormal Stimuli and Eroticism in the production of Artwork: An Experiment in Countering Cultural Hegemony in Public Space

This is a practice-led research project topic overlaps the fields across psychology, politics, philosophy, sexuality, and art. It critically exams if the use of sexuality (specifically evolutionary psychology theory of supernormal stimuli and Eroticism) in the production of artwork can potentially combat or disrupt political repression. It further questions if the use of supernormal stimuli could subversively reveal the issues and even reshape the existing social-political and cultural issues such as Chinese censorship and postcolonialism in Chinese public space. My project encourages politically oppressed communities to speak up the unspeakable and repressed political opinions.

Augmented Reality interface Erotic Poetics invite the viewers to scan the location-based GPS QR code from a specific location of the exhibition space. The viewers can interact the short clips of videos with the background of public space/semi-public gallery space. The hologram installation Emotional Encounter and sculpture Book of Disquiet are both remind of the viewer as the subject of subaltern class: the visible and invisible layers of hologram installation Emotional Encounter, the distorted and ambiguous shape of sculpture Book of Disquiet, together with the augmented reality interface with the reality, are all the result of self-censorship under Chinese repressive political regime.

My research aims to empower politically repressed communities to express their silenced voice. The Chinese government is censoring people’s voices and makes various things invisible. My project attempts to give form to unknown desire and encourage people to verbalize their feelings through my work. This research proposes that supernormal stimuli and erotic stimulation can help to unlock and trigger a hidden subterranean layer of affect that allows subaltern people’s voices to be heard through the bodily affects provoked by my work. When my work gives form to a submerged and repressed or even unknown desire, it allows an opportunity to articulate in public space. It is unleashing. It is not just a feeling of fantasy, imagination, and the sense of being excluded from the public sphere, but almost as if I am creating an expression which could go under the radar of the government’s control of representation, and which aims to counteract the patriarchal, hegemonic, post-colonial and anti-erotic world.

More information please see: https://itinerant-space.co.uk/mini-abstract/augmented-reality-interface-erotic-poetics/