2023 - current, Internet
Locating Cabbage is a continuing series exploring identity politics in a digital world through the internet persona of a cabbage. The project is a means of processing our relationship with produce and land within the global food supply chain. Through the internet, the cabbage identity becomes immortalized with endless cabbage content and immediate access to cabbage through grocery delivery services, essentially “erasing” the labor associated with farming with user accessibility. How is this digitally fast-moving shift affecting our collective understanding of natural resources in relation to the consumeristic need to brand everything from fruits and vegetables to our internet identity?
2023:
Locating Cabbage, experimental video
2024:
2020, Tokyo, Japan
The Transformation of The 100 Yen Shop Product deconstructs the relationship between consumerism and human emotions. This installation was created when Macro Waves collective was in residency at the Youkobo Air, in Tokyo Japan. In the center are small sculptures made of products sourced from 100 yen shops (100円ショップ, hyaku-en shopp). Birdd deconstructs each object by removing its functionality and extracting its consumer properties. On the left of the installation is a cybernetic animated model, examining how advertising has been designed to trigger our emotions for profit. On the right and center are portals, projection-mapped onto the wall, and mirrors. Through portals, we can envision a transformation of advertisement culture.
Sounds by Joshua Icban
Mix Media Installation: Projection mapped animations onto dollar store objects that include: foam brick, mirrors, acrylic nails, beads, banana hanger, shower rack, face mask, dust cleaner, cell phone tripod, and silly putty.
10 x 10 x 4 ft
2019 - 2020
Digital sculptures of water
Dimensions variable
2020
The Cybernetic Model of Consumerism & Our Emotions is a visual moving map that deconstructs our emotional relationship with consumerism. The model explains how the culture of capitalistic consumerism is a codependent system designed to feed off of human emotions for profit. When watching the map grow from our individual emotions “You” into the larger cybernetic model of consumerism we are able to unlearn and break the codependent relationship between our emotions and our consumer habits.
2020
Water, A Sensation is a decorative water fountain installation made of everyday plastic objects. The installation closely examines our relationship with commodity and resources from the lens of advertisement culture.
Sounds: Vodka commercial
Mixed-Media Installation: Decorative water fountain, found plastic, video ads, and projection-mapped animations
10 x 8 x 4 ft
2020
Digital animation
Dimensions variable
2019
The Addict, Ally & Alien is a speculative fiction installation that transports the viewer into a spiritual, sacred space from the future. It is a collaboration between Anum Awan and Robin Birdd that was exhibited as part of SOMArt’s show, Rebooting the Future, which took place in August 2019. It combines large sculptural elements and old electronics with new technologies like projection mapping and embedded screens to critically engage with and explore the future roles of technology, specifically through the lens of science fiction.
Sounds by Joshua Icban
New Media Installation: Projection mapping, found cellphones, vintage electronics, found ornaments, and satellite.
12 x 12 x 8 ft
2019
Holograms, Feelings, and Portals: An Advertisement is a projection animation series in response to the dramatic escalation of digital advertisements and its impact on human society and our mental health. As our world becomes increasingly digitized, how is the rise in digital technology impacting our overall well-being? Inspired by sci-fi motion pictures and anime, this series utilizes hologram and futuristic advertisement aesthetics as a way to process feelings in-relation to the interwebs. Rather than projecting on flat surfaces like walls, these animations are designed to be projected onto fabric and moving objects as a way to articulate the complexity related to human emotions and technology.
Digital animations
Dimensions variable
A series of wearables that aspire to dress the human body outside of cultural appearance expectations. By dressing the body in the “other”, the wearables challenge gender, conformity, and addresses how we are taught from early childhood development to perform a manufactured identity.
Paper mache wearables
Dimensions variable
Mushroom Wearable, 2018
Photos by Alexander Lim
Ginger Wearable, 2019
Photos by Sarah Kim
2017, CounterPulse, San Francisco, CA
Boobies of Christ is a performance-based installation inspired by childhood memories and trauma of Catholic school, Catholic colonialism’s relationship with Filipino traditions, coming of age experiences, and gender roles in relation to the body.
Textile wearables, tapestry, and an altar made of ready-made objects, soft sculptures, and found religious memorabilia
Performed by Robin Birdd, Tina Kashiwagi, Kimberly Lewis, and Jeffrey Yip.
Shot by Alexander Lim and Thavin Rajanakhan
Edited By Alexander Lim
Music: Natureboy Flako - Shape of Things To Come
2019
The Face Panty is the first piece for a conceptual clothing line that critiques the structures of the seasonal fast fashion industry.
When wearing The Face Panty, a person is protected from any form of toxic masculinity, similar to the way UV sunglasses protect a person’s eyes from the sun.
Textile Wearables: Faux pearls from the Phillippines, found fabric, and climbing rope
Photos by Adrian David
2018
"仕方が無い “Shikata ga nai” / but it can be helped" is a MACRO WAVES on-going video installation series exploring intergenerational experiences in the context of a persons' bedroom. The first part of this series focuses on the personal experiences of member Tina Kashiwagi, who is Yonsei (4th generation Japanese American), and her grandmother’s sister, Christine Umeda, who is Nisei. Through intimate conversations between the two, the question of how the trauma of internment is passed down through generations is posed, breaking the silence of “Shikata ga nai.”
This installation utilizes immersive interview techniques, allowing viewers to interact with the interview. In the bedroom, the interview is sprinkled throughout various mediums of technology: projection-mapped furniture, cellphone selfies, cassette player audio interviews, laptop video interviews, and single slide projector family photos. This type of immersive experience allows the viewer to explore the intergenerational experiences on their own terms.
Mixed Media Installation: 5 channel video sculpture, audio interview, slide projector, ambient light, bedroom furniture, and projection-mapped animated video collage on magazine cutout collage
10 x 16 x 12 ft
2018
TFOBBIWIS is an ongoing series that translates the feelings of being a person of color in white institutional spaces through object and digital work. If these feelings could manifest into an object, what would those feelings look and sound like?
Robert Gonzales, 2018
Robert Gonzales is the first of the series and a culmination of the past 7 years working in art institutional spaces.
Textile soft sculpture
5 x 3 x 3 ft
2016
Googoogagaaa is an interactive installation exploring coming of age experiences in relation to colonialism, family history, and childhood development through the use of play. Viewers are invited to play in a similar fashion as a children’s play pin.
Soft Textile Installation: Fabric, ready-made objects, and found religious memorabilia
9 x 12 x 8 ft
2017 - ongoing
Made from everyday objects that often have heavy cultural symbolism often referencing a time and place. The whips take apart the objects’ cultural significance, breaking free from former societal expectations.
Soft Sculptures: Graduation Tassel, yarn, cell phones
Dimensions variable
2017
In collaboration with MACRO WAVES :
Cortextual Voyager 3000, is a modular interactive geodesic dome that follows a narrative held in a distant utopian future where humans have reached a higher state of consciousness through meditation and technology. By utilizing interactive sculpture, projection mapping, and performative storytelling, the "subconscious guides" of Cortextual Voyager traveled back in time from the future, to invite participants to heal from the trauma of today’s society through futuristic methods of meditation. With the use of biofeedback apparatuses, participants are immersed in audio-visual experience generated from data is generated from their meditated state. The participants are encouraged to calm themselves through meditation, and when the biosensors detect the ideal state for tranquility, the dome becomes tranquil with the aid of light and binaural beats.
Multimedia installation/performance: textiles, geodesic dome, projection mapping, and biosensor apparatuses
6.5 x 5 x 8 ft
2016
Boobies of Christ is a performance-based installation inspired by childhood memories and trauma of Catholic school, Catholic colonialism’s relationship with Filipino traditions, coming of age experiences, and gender roles in relation to the body.
Textile wearables, tapestry, and an altar made of ready-made objects, soft sculptures, and found religious memorabilia
Featuring: Kimberly Lewis, Hannah Beck, Maria Dawn, Tina Kashiwagi, Camilla Carper, and Jeffrey Yip.
Video by Adrian David
Photos by Gina Buckley
2019, 2020
Digital animations
Dimensions variable
Oil on wood
2015
