My Blue Rabbit project is like something
out of a twisted feminist sci-fi dream. I wanted to bring self-portraiture and virtual reality/identity together to create a model of myself that in theory was born out of my virtual presence on social media. Imagine the attributes of your facebook, okcupid, etc. coming to life, being born through the 3D printer womb and living as you. Obviously, with out imagination, this project does not work. The reality is a 5 inch figurine that is inanimate, essentially faceless, and perhaps even boring. The use of film to ‘animate’ or bring to life this plastic self image is key to sharing this idea quickly and creatively to an outside audience. I considered many options on how to portray her voice, her personhood. Should I speak using my voice? Should I use a robots voice reading text I wrote? Should I use text, silent and open to interpretation?
My 3D ‘replica’ is 154mm (6 inches) tall, 69mm wide, and 66mm deep. My RL body is 1,676.4mm tall. ‘She’ is made of 33g of plastic filament compared to my 56699g of ‘natural’ filament. It took ‘her’ 6 hours to print, where as my mother was in labor with me for 12.
Designing myself was easy. I stood in front of a scanner. I played with positions of my arms, and my posture, which at that moment seemed so incredibly important. I was constrained in movement and detail. My posture would forever be cast into plastic, representing me in form as slightly more than an amorphous white blob. My arms had to stay fixed at my sides or at least have my hands attaching somewhere. My legs are also fixed, immobile and in Tinkercad became rooted to a cylindrical platform to allow my replica to stand on her own, to have a platform, literally. I chose a white filament to catch lights and show shadow and texture. I considered painting ‘her’ but decided it would take away from the raw machine made feel it had.
After her lead role in Cyborga, my 3D model will most likely retire to a shelf in my house a souvenir of exploring my relationship with my virtual self. Her legacy will live on in my future work exploring the intersection of feminism, identity, and technology through art.