THE GAZE ARMOR
Performative Wearable Display
Collaborators: Danny Clarke, Cherry Wu, Li Zhou.
Timeline: January - April 2022.
Personal Responsibilities & Skills:
Design & Social Research, Product Design, Electronics Design, Fabrication, Videography, Performative Art, Audience Engagement.
The Gaze Armor is a prosthetic designed to confront microaggressions in the form of the male gaze. Realized as part of the Harvard sexual harassment lawsuit and countless silenced cases on college campuses, the piece seeks to interrogate the notion of woman as a “spectacle” and man as “the bearer of the look”. These gazes are not neutral and it is crucial to problematize the contexts and frictions that precede after the bodily experience.
Wearable technology on the breast-space mediates new ways of seeing female bodies: The performer invites attention to no other body parts but the breasts, and uses the gathered attention as a medium of protest. By reclaiming the symbolic silence, the armor engages the audience with a sequence of layered imagery depicting the multidimensionality of the female narrative - redefining beauty as a delicate process of care, nurture, empowerment, pleasure, and conflict. Through the deliberate disruption of “the gaze,” the performer regains bodily agency and is empowered through self-advocacy.
WHERE IT STARTED
THE MALE GAZE
NARRATIVE
DESIGN & PROTOTYPE
VIDEOS ON DISPLAY
You may notice this video has been uploaded in an alternative format, which was due to its removal from YouTube on the grounds of policy violation. This incident highlights the undeniable fact that the unembellished narrative and truth pertaining to female bodies face unwelcome reception and a singular way of interpretation within the domain of mainstream. This further serves as an additional rationale for our pursuit of this project.
