Acupunture For Temporal Fruit Interactive Sculpture Jennifer Hall: Artist Marc LoCascio: Engineer Blyth Hazen: Fabrication Kyle Jarger : Kyleboard Design

	Photo Credit: George Peet Photo Credit: Sam Ogden

"Acupuncture for Temporal Fruit is comprised of twelve identical units, suspended from the gallery ceiling. Each computer-assisted unit contains a tomato (or tomatoes), electric motors, acupuncture needles, and sonar devices. The sonar devices detect your presence at various locations in the gallery. When you trigger the sonar, the electric motors activate the needles which pierce the ripe flesh of the fruit." "The content of this artwork primarily involves issues surrounding the intersections of modern medicine, technology, and ethics. Here, an instrument of healing (acupuncture) is rendered as something sinister, and this calls to mind many of the ironies of contemporary health care. These machines have the look of rational science about them, but also bear a great deal of emotional content surrounding torture, pain, death, and sex. The tomatoes seem like passive objects of research, but they are also metaphors for the body, and seem to bleed as they disintegrate. These conflicting notions are further complicated by the direct complicity of museum visitors, whose presence and choice of locations within the gallery activate a process fraught with technological anxiety." Excerpt from Make Your Move, an exhibition organized in conjunction with the Boston Cyber Arts Festival Joyce and Edward Linde Gallery, March 27, 1999 - May 31, 1999 Decordova Museum and Sculpture Park Preparing the Pods - Work in Progress Do While Studio Basement Mark and Blyth tweak the system Mark checks Control-Voltage-to-MIDI Interface Building the Kyleboards Blyth connects senor controllers to Kyleboards Blyth sews bags Sue attaches clips to bags Keith stretches Blyth backs into pods Jen is overwhelmed Finally, The Night the Pods Ran The artists and engineers would like to thank The Decordova Museum with special thanks to Nick Capasso, Curator and Brad Gonyer, Preparitor. Additional thanks to: Ellen Abdow, Sue Bennett, Ethan Berry, Cindy Brown, Linda Bourke, Kathy Desmond, Keith Donaldson, George Fifield, Gabrielle Keller, Laurie Lindop, Anne Loyer, John McCormack, Sue Oppie, George Peet, Lynda Shift, Bethany Shorb, and Doug Sweeter. In-kind donations provided by Polaroid Corporation and Do While Studio. back to ISC Presentation