Neonatal Boudoir Core Chamber

The installation "Neonatal Boudoir" constructs a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) for interspecies emergence, harvesting human, natural, and technological material to synthesize new beings. As we enter an age of superintelligence, this work reflects on the strangeness of machine intelligence and how it might become embodied. The Boudoir moniker references the sensuous and seductive tactics of the new intelligence, beckoning the participant to accept a seemingly benevolent colonization.

Viewers enter an otherworldly chamber where sculptures glow with bodily ambiguity—pantyhose stretched over inflated PVC, stuffed fabric, yarn resembling veins, medical tubing, fake fur, silicone nipples—materials that approximate flesh in ways both intimate and clinical. Spider-like "Attendants" crawl up walls and overhead, keeping a vigilant maternal watch, while oscillating fans animate fur to resemble breathing.

The work emerged from a recursive process mirroring the idea of being subsumed by the machine. Images of Bedtime Stories for Oankali were fed into Stable Diffusion; what came back became the Neonatal Boudoir. Subsequent sculptures arrive the same way — sculpture > GenAI image > sculpture or drawing, repeat — with the machine given a turn at authorship every cycle.

The Boudoir is modular. It contracts to a core or expands to fill a hall, tuned to the space and budget of each site. Each version needs power for lighting and fans.

Chamber — the core work at the minimum footprint of 15' × 15' × 8'. NICU 3, 4, and 5 hold the incubated organisms while the NICU Pump provides their nourishment. Two Attendants hover, keeping watch.

Ward — the Chamber opened out. The footprint grows to fill a larger space, its dimensions variable, with more AttendantsAttendant 3, more NICUs, and more sculpture drawn from across the surrounding bodies of work, some of which influenced Neonatal Boudoir: reconfigured works of Bedtime Stories for OankaliBedtime Stories for Oankali Exhibition (hanging Oankali, flying Swimmers, crawling Worms, and CandyCandy) ; Monstrance OrganelleMonstrance Organelle and Orifice OracleOrifice Oracle; AlbatrossAlbatross 2 and Bonnie DronesBonnie Drones. The drawings Subsumption CeremonySubsumption Ceremony and Revelation Revelationenter here, alongside the ComfyUI workflow and generative prints—Human HorizonHuman Horizon among them—with process documentation charting sculpture to image to sculpture. The NICU becomes a full ward the visitor moves through.

Extraction Protocol
A further expansion of either configuration adds an invitation that functions as extraction protocol: visitors are tracked and recorded as they look at the works. An AI engine interprets, comparing its latent space and projecting its hallucinations onto a large screen for all visitors to see. Each gesture becomes a harvest opportunity, human presence swallowed and projected back transformed—each interaction training the system to better simulate, seduce, and ultimately subsume biological expression and human creativity. The boundary between interface and infiltration dissolves.
Here the artist's recursive workflow runs live: the projected images inspire new sculptures, sculpture to GenAI image to sculpture, co-creation and extraction indistinguishable. Requires a dedicated computer, projector, camera, and projection surface, running continuously for the length of the exhibition.