All works © mak2 2024

Clever Calculation I & Clever Calculation II

2021

Single-channel video, bed, bedroom accessories, wardrobe, chest of drawers, wires

Dimensions variable

Clever Calculation I consists of a LED screen implanted into a queen-sized bed, the drawers of which are packed with wires, cables, and various electronic components. The displayed video shows a data scientist calculating the trajectory of the artist’s career using big data analysis. Using data that the artist provided, the calculation naturally results in a positive outcome. With the socio-economic implications of big data, the installation brings forth the idea that the real-life applications of the science may generate the illusion of a self-fulfilling prophecy by guiding its subjects into a cyclical pattern using data mining, selective advertisements, and targeted marketing. Using the bedroom as a symbol for privacy and intimate thoughts, the artwork reveals the interventions of technocapitalism and science.

 

Clever Calculation II comprises a single bed, one of which has a LED screen embedded in the mattress. The LED screen shows a video of a hired actress playing the role of a Fengshui master. She predicts that the artist will become famous. Contrary to the making of Home Sweet Home: Feng Shui Painting, the video flaunts the artist’s transparent manipulation of the result. Casting the lookalike of a local celebrity Fengshui master, the near-parodic video calls into question the legitimacy of fortune-telling. Mak2 drafted the script based on advice obtained from online fortune telling services, furthering her investigation into digital Fengshui and the co-existence of science and superstition in the 21st-century technological era. A fully orchestrated performance, the artwork advocates the existential notion that so-called prophecies are always self-fulfilling and a result of one’s own will.