The Anomaly: Re-narrating Women, Bodies, and Nature
Yeles Studio
Premiere: Jun. 28–29, 2024 at Center for Art and Technology, Taipei National University of the Arts, Taipei, Taiwan
About Projection Design
The Anomaly: Re-narrating Women, Bodies, and Nature is inspired by the experience of Taiwanese media artist Yen Tzu Chang, who was heckled by men on the street during a residency in Western Australia. Drawing on Donna J. Haraway’s cyborg feminism in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, the work rethinks boundaries among species, gender, and machines.
Video & projection designer Lee Kuo-Han uses real-time motion detection combined with AI-generated imagery to recast biological evolution as machinic algorithm.
AI-assisted facial scanning projects performers’ scanned faces onto gauze, serving as a metaphor for the entanglement of gender, society, and individuals, and reflecting on how Asian women’s bodies are constructed under patriarchy.
Beyond visible appearance and physical form, the production deconstructs the Chinese character component meaning “female,” unpacking characters that bear both positive and negative connotations to challenge stereotypes and bias in the Chinese linguistic context.
Facial scanning with AI morphing projects an “optimized face” back onto the performer’s own face. The image lays bare data-driven aesthetics as a regime of discipline, mirroring contemporary anxieties over appearance.
Body tracking triggers AI-generated flora that entwine and rewrite posture. From an ecofeminist perspective, the scene foregrounds vegetal lines of becoming across the “nonhuman–human” continuum.
Real-time detection layers AI-generated animal projections over the dancer, tracing—through an ecofeminist lens—the evolution of biological sex from mammals to reptiles back to single-celled life.
Chinese characters containing the “female” radical—such as 嫁 (to marry), 妖 (seductress/witch), 婢(maidservant), 姥 (old woman)—are deconstructed to show how their historical semantics accumulate gendered bias and fuel pejorative imaginaries of women.
On the verge of release, the tulle lifts; projected language and species surface and fade together, signaling the unmaking of species boundaries.
Projection resolves into pure light; everything returns to a tranquil sea .
Video
Credits
Creative Director/Music Designer: Yen-Tzu CHANG
Co-Creative Choreographer: Ting-Ting CHAO
Dancer: Pei-Xuan ZHAN
Visual / Projection Designer: LEE Kuo-Han (Max)
Lighting Designer: Xin-Ci CAO
Stage Manager: Chu-Xin CHENG
Stage Technical Director: Bo-Yan LIU
Sound Engineering, Ambisonic Programming: Zhi-Lin CHEN
Executive Producer: Jing-hang LIN
Photography: Ting-Zhen ZHANG
Motion Photography: March Film Studio, Bo-Yan XU
Organizer: TNUA Center for Art and Technology
Production Unit: Yeles Studio