anna davis

Anna Davis and Jason Gee, Biohead actualized

 

Text by Margie Borschke

Data is meaningless. Ones and zeros judge nothing. Puppets need masters. But still, when we encounter Anna Davis and Jason Gee’s Bioheads, digitally-animated ventriloquist dolls that sing pop songs and spit out psychobabble, we’re not exactly sure whose lips are moving.

Davis and Gee download the digital detritus of contemporary culture—snapshots of dusty ventriloquist dolls sold on eBay, self-help tomes hawked at Amazon.com, celebrity photographs with viral tendencies, and some of the catchy little numbers that populate peer-to-peer networks—and remix and reanimate the random data (with the help of easy-to-use animation software) in an absurdist attempt to make sense of it all.

Naturally the puppets get all of the attention. When George Bush and Osama Bin Laden sing a duet of Snap’s “I’ve got the Power” or Stalin, Hitler and Mao get together for a rousing rendition of “I Get Around” by The Beach Boys in Bioheads Karaoke, it’s a performance not to be missed. More than just a good gag or a clever juxtaposition, however, Bioheads pack a satirical punch because they are composite reflections of what really exists. The seeming humanity of Bioheads is all borrowed: we’re the ghost in the machine.

In Biohead Actualized, Davis and Gee show us what “greedy little dolls” (1) we’ve become. This new video installation holds a mirror up to the contemporary quest for self-improvement and perfection, and gives life to a post-modern Prometheus, a creature who speaks only the language of self-help, spewing distrustful, selfish and even silly advice at unsuspecting passersby. But the Biohead isn’t making any of it up—Everything he utters is lifted directly from a self-help audio book. The Biohead is the kind of personality that develops when fed a steady diet of actualization mantras —no wonder his psyche seems so sinister. He has been reprogrammed.

But as creepy as Bioheads may be, there is also a playfulness that stems from both the work’s humour as well as the empowerment afforded by sample-based digital culture. One can make George Bush bark like a dog if one wants to. The digital environment makes use a more powerful critical tool than production and turns consumption on its head. By agitating the media environment Gee and Davis exercise powerful artistic agency in the face of media hyper-saturation and proliferation. They’re pulling all the strings now.

While Davis and Gee may coax the Bioheads to come out and play, they also speak about the strange sense of autonomy the Bioheads exert, explaining that the digital dolls seem to develop personality partly on their own. The artists tease out subtle facial expressions and meaningful gestures from what’s already there, creating a life-like being from a single moment once captured in a photograph. That moment now has a life of its own and there is a palpable glee in watching as the image runs away from its past and into any number of digital futures.

(1)  From a conversation with Anna Davis & Jason Gee on March 8, 2008.

Margie Borschke is a Sydney-based writer and a PhD candidate at the Centre for Social Research in Journalism and Communication at University of New South Wales. Her academic research investigates the use of copies and duplication as creative practices and communication tools in digital networks and natural systems. As a journalist, Borschke has contributed to and reported for a wide variety of respected international publications including The New York Times Magazine, The Times (UK), Harper’s Magazine, and Metropolis. In the mid-nineties, in New York City, she also worked to produce and launch some of the first experiments in web-based publishing. In 2002, she relocated from New York to Sydney with her Australian partner, and has since added many Australian publications to her portfolio including The Weekend Australian, Spectrum, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. She is also a member of NUCA, the Network of Uncollectable Artists.

Details of work
Biohead-Actualized
2008
dimensions variable, single screen video installation constructed from found sounds and re-animated digital photos.

Biohead Karaoke
2005-2008
20 min video projection, dimensions variable, constructed from found sounds, a cappella vocals and re-animated digital photos

In Biohead Karaoke a chorus of 3D heads sing a Capella versions of popular tunes. The dolls are created by stitching, grafting and re-animating found images and sounds, employing a kind of DIY, digital plastic surgery to ‘bring-to-life’ an absurd collection of famous and ‘infamous’ historical, political and pop-cultural figures.

Artists’ Biographies

 

Anna Davis and Jason Gee bioheads

Anna Davis b. 1974, Sydney, Australia. Currently resides Sydney, Australia.  Has an Advanced Certificate in Interactive Multimedia Metro Screen, Sydney (2000) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Hons, College of Fine Arts, UNSW. Jason Gee b. 1965, Darwin. Currently resides Sydney, Australia. Has a Bachelor of Arts, Visual Arts, Sculpture Audio-visual, Sydney College of Fine Arts, University of Sydney (1988). Collaborative exhibitions include NOIR SCRATCH, Sydney Festival, Hyde Park Barracks (2008); BIOHEAD KAROKE, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Art at Night Series (2005) Plaything dlux media arts Digital Games & Art Exhibition, at Lanfranchi’s Memorial Discotheque, Sydney (2005); Electrofringe Festival, This is Not Art, Newcastle (2005); Video projections at the Winston, The Netherlands (2005); Big Day Out music festival (2001–2007).
Davis and Gee are Sydney-based media artists who have been working together for the past six years. Their collaborative, audiovisual practice uses sampling, video scratch techniques, projection and cut-up to agitate the media environment. Collecting and manipulating fragments from film, television, computer games and the Internet, they scavenge the debris of popular culture to create ‘absurdist mashups’ and video collages exploring disturbing patterns and humour underlying the everyday.

http://mic.org.nz/events/exhibitions/past/2008/mirror-states/anna-davis/