Sushi-cyborg and menstruation machine

Hiromi Ozaki is some kind of hybrid between Laurie Anderson and Maywa Denki.

She’s not only a graduate of Design Interactions (RCA, London), she’s also Sputniko!, a Japanese pop star whose music, videos, performances and electronic devices explore themes of technology, gender and pop culture.

3817828964_68ba2ef773_b.jpgPénis Cybernétique, close-up. Image Sputniko!

Hiromi is the author of devices such as the Pénis Cybernétique (i’m sure your french is fluent enough to make sense of the words) and Crowbot Jenny, a dark-haired girl who goes around urban park carrying on her shoulder a crow-shaped robot that can communicate with crows and turn them into a bird army. Her first dvd album Parakonpe 3000 is a collection of videos which comment on our relationship with technology. There’s the “Child Producing Machine” but also the Google Song, “Sputniko! TV: A Children’s Program for Newly Born A.I.s” and the Wakki Song (an interactive armpit performance).

More than just a gadget, a video, a song, Sputniko! creates a whole character with its own manga-inspired aesthetics, attributes, super-powers and dynamics. Each of her projects has been produced in collaboration with scientists experts in Zoology, Medicine and Reproductive Science.

She was presenting two new works at the Summer exhibition of the Royal College of Art.

0amesntrtmachiens.jpgPhotography: Rai Royal

First, a much blogged-about device which, i hope, will soon be added to the collection of the Museum of Menstruation.

The question at the heart of the Menstruation Machine, Takashi’s Take is ‘It’s 2010, so why are humans still menstruating?’

Abdominal pain, headaches, depression, emotional sensitivity, feeling bloated, changes in sex drive and nausea, premenstrual water retention, etc. Not to mention mood swings. Why do women still have to go through that?

Women are in good company though. just like them, chimpanzees and fruit bats need to bleed monthly for their reproductive cycle.

What does Menstruation mean, biologically, culturally and historically, to humans? Who might choose to have it, and how might they have it?

Fitted with a blood dispensing mechanism and lower-abdomen-stimulating electrodes (the same used by your uncle to muscle his abs while watching tv on the sofa, only that Hiromi maxed out the power of the contractions), the Menstruation Machine simulates the pain and bleeding of an average 5 day menstruation.

4menstri53cebd1c49.jpgDetail of the Menstruation Machine

The machine could be worn by men who desire to feel closer to women and experience what they have to go through, but also by women when menstruation becomes obsolete in the future and the process becomes a mere ritual of gender and identity.

The artist made a music video to illustrate how and by whom the machine could be used.

The video ‘Menstruation Machine – Takashi’s Take’ stars Takashi, a boy who builds the machine in an attempt to understand better what the girls he hang around with experience every month.

0asuchsiborjgoi.jpgPhotography: Rai Royal

Her second project had the same level of fantasy, the same vision of a technocratic future. Sushiborg Yukari is a cyborg designed to serve Sushi on her rotating belt. Her function is to entertain over-worked Japanese businessmen in their after-hours. She is tomorrow’s equivalent of Nyotai Mori, the tradition of serving Sushi on naked women.

Given scientists’ fondness for young, slick, pretty girl-robots, one would not be surprised to see a sushi cyborg hit the gadget blogs in the future. Sushiborg Yukari, however, is a dissatisfied cyborg.

0aasushiplatre0.jpgHiromi Ozaki demonstrates the dangerous sushi belt

When Yukari’s artificial intelligence develops enough to understand she’s little more that a sex object, she starts to slowly and secretly hack herself into a lethal weapon by attaching knives to her own body. And one day, she manages to escape the sushi restaurant….

Sputniko!, Sushiborg Yukari

More works from the RCA show, over here, ladies and gents!