There is a thin line between art and science that will one day be erased when the robots take over and all art becomes human organs smashed onto cold steel plates. But until that (frankly inevitable) day, here are a few art projects that cross that line, then turn around and obliterate it with laser cannons mounted on a spider tank. Welcome to the thesis that earned Victor Von Doom his arts doctorate:
#7. The Anonymous Human Face Collection
Kari Mulholland/TED
Bear with us for a moment: We're beta testing a niche offshoot of Jeff Foxworthy humor.
Ahem.
"If your mantelpiece looks like this ..."
Via Cyclopsblog
"... you might be a serial killer."
The above piece, Stranger Visions, is by artist and Ph.D. student Heather Dewey-Hagborg. She's employed a novel method of face theft: Rather than doing things the old-fashioned way with witch-curses and murderous nano-bots, she instead creates 3D-printed replicas of strangers' faces by scavenging old chewing gum and cigarette butts off the street and harvesting the carelessly discarded DNA within.
Heather Dewey-Hagborg
And this is why you don't smoke, kids: You could get cancer or become a victim of face-theft.
The artist then takes her disgusting street garbage to a do-it-yourself biolab in New York and examines the DNA to determine 40 to 50 genetic traits that influence the look of the face, such as race, eye color and spacing, and the likelihood of obesity. The data then goes through a program that reconstructs the face of the anonymous, unknowing subject ...
Heather Dewey-Hagborg
... brands them with a knowing, pitiless stare ...
And somewhere, a careless smoker wakes up without a face. They try to scream but have no mouth. Harlan Ellison chuckles in his sleep, though he does not know why.
#6. Jewelry Parasites Fueled By Your Body
Naomi Kizhner
Remember The Matrix, in which evil robot overlords convert human beings into batteries to power their unholy empire? Most people saw that and shuddered. Designer Naomi Kizhner saw it and figured the only thing missing was appropriate bling.
Kizhner's project, dubbed Energy Addicts, starts out innocently enough with the "blinker," a device that sits on the bridge of your nose converting blinking motions to electricity while simultaneously making you look like an extra from David Lynch's Dune.
Naomi Kizhner
Get back on your sandworm and go get a refund for that.
Then there's the "e-pulse conductor," the severed pincer of a metal scorpion that feasts on the electric impulses of your spinal cord. Because, in a post-apocalyptic world of energy shortages, how else are you going to maintain enough charge on your iPhone to boot up Fruit Ninja?
Naomi Kizhner
You know it's cutting-edge fashion when people try to swat
your accessories with a rolled-up magazine.
Finally, there's the "blood bridge," a thumb-sized steampunk parasite that derives energy from the flow of your own blood -- energy that would otherwise have been wasted by, y'know, keeping you alive. The blood bridge stabs a needle into your veins at both ends and acts as a kind of hydroelectric dam in your circulatory system, using blood flow to spin a tiny little turbine and generate electricity.
Naomi Kizhner
"It gets even more efficient when my blood pressure spikes from terror screaming
because holy shit this thing is in my vein!"
For now, these devices are practical only as art: The amount of energy they'd generate could barely power a wristwatch. But at least we have think tanks tackling the problem of how to reduce human beings to their basic electrical potential so that our future robotic despots won't have to.
#5. Techno-Fashions Fit For A Supervillain
Anouk Wipprecht
The Spider-Man movies feature colorful villains with elaborate get-ups that let them stomp around on robot legs or shoot acid out of their armpits, and yet that costume designer never gets any damn credit. Here she is: Dutch fashion designer Anouk Wipprecht.
Anouk Wipprecht
Seen here preparing to destroy the Ghostbusters.
Wipprecht merges the latest trends in fashion with the latest monologues in mad science. One of her hottest creations is the Faraday dress -- a stylish frock held together with metal wires that replicate the effects of a Faraday cage, which protects the wearer from lightning bolts. The Faraday dress is perfect for the villainess who finds herself frequently on the wrong side of a Thor, or who likes to make catty comments about Storm's mohawk phase.
Wipprecht also designed the Spider Dress, a gown that comes equipped with shoulder-mounted robotic spider legs and motion sensors to provide the wearer with a kind of spider-sense. The sensors detect the motion of anyone approaching the wearer. If they come at you aggressively, the spider legs will automatically assume an attack position. If they approach you passively, the legs will relax and even make beckoning gestures so that the victim might continue to approach until you can seize them and liquefy their innards with your lady venom.
Wipprecht's other creations include Intimacy 2.0, which utilizes futuristic materials that turn transparent depending on the wearer's heartbeat. Get too excited and parts of your clothing will turn transparent, which seems directly in line with the design sense of female comic book characters. Then there's the Smoke Dress, which pumps out a cloud of smoke whenever anyone approaches, enabling you to make a ninja-style getaway.
Anouk Wipprecht
Because literally everyone is a potential enemy when you dress like this.
#4. Dolls Made From Living Human Cells
Oron Catts & Ionat Zurr
Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, who already have the preposterous names of comic book characters, have made one ominous appearance on this site already. And now here they are again with their latest excursion into the field of "bio-art."
Oron Catts and Lonat Zurr
With that name you can probably gather that we aren't exactly talking papier-mache here.
Those wet, pulsating, screaming voodoo monstrosities are made out of living cells. Each doll comes pre-terrifyingly named for easy identification in your new recurring nightmares. They are: Absolute Truth, Biotechnology, Capitalism, Demagogy, Eugenics, Fear Itself, and the ironically named Hope.
Oron Catts & Ionat Zurr
The easiest to identify is Fear Itself, because it's all of them.
And just to drive home the point that scientific progress requires sacrifice (it doesn't matter who -- the scientist, the subject, the unsuspecting world) Doll G was created solely in order to watch it die a slow death. It was hanged by the neck in its growth chamber so that the weight of its own growing body would eventually decapitate it, thus symbolizing the "death" of the notion that life is nothing more than a genetic Tinkertoy. Or maybe just as practice for those who will eventually oppose the Zurr-Catts Consortium.
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