How can I make my Baby smile? Is an interactive queer, comedic, new media robotics performance work. The work explores the possibilities and limitations of technology and language as linked material-based mediums of communication and ways of mutual understanding between beings. Is there cruelty in demanding complete understanding between different worlds? Are there benefits that can come from the acceptance of surface-level understanding based on care for the differences between different worlds and their inhabitants?
Based on the artist's own research into creating compassionate machine learning models and Artificial intelligence in order to help “Queer the machine.”
Developed during the Queer Development Program with Performance Space and Performed for the first time during Queer Nu Werk 21/07/2023 - 22/07/2023 at PACT, Sydney, Gadigal Country, Australia.
The Performance in its current state is just over 5 minutes long. The work features the artist in her cow suit and one of her robotic shark performance partner Moo/Cherie.
“From the world of an Art Tech Femme Pest. How can I make my Baby smile is a material, generative and tactile experiment into bringing queer wanderlust back into adulthood after experiencing heartbreak. Using the absurdity of binaries through that of a cow and a shark. The work is a conduit of learning to reconnect with our inner and often misunderstood, yet gorgeous monsters. For Sharkie this means reaching back into their girlhood to remember the first time, she felt the queer sublime joy of falling in love with a perfect pair of ankles and or dorsal fin.”