“Artificial stupidity,” Hito Steyerl’s term for the countless failures of advanced technologies when confronted with human reality, stems from the impossibility of fully modeling desire, expectation and outcome in the machine-like language of numbers and logic. In “Strawberry,” the single-room-sized sculpture that makes up Caitlyn Min-ji Au’s solo show “Panda,” the artificial idiot is a Roborock Q7 Max robot vacuum trying to traverse the known world and return home. Beginning on a narrow plywood platform encircling a cylindrical structure, it crosses a precipitous bridge onto a pink cube resembling a toy house. On the roof of this new territory, the robot flits in and out of view, sometimes diving into the hidden interior, sometimes fluttering along the visible edge. Its movements are often confused and it rarely succeeds in its task, but the viewer comes to empathize with it over time. The robot is blind apart from the limited information it obtains through lasers and math. It ventures forth, hoping its path will lead somewhere real.
“Strawberry” is acutely attuned to the oblique, illusory nature of perception. Within walls constructed from builder-grade insulation are corridors and rooms, but these interiors can only be seen fractionally from three small openings requiring the viewer to stretch and contort. Unexpected objects anchor each exposed scene—a small fountain, a bag of artificial shark fin—yet careful scrutiny reveals some to be absent, instead reflected by a seamless mirror whose contents are virtually indistinguishable from direct sight. Behind the surface exists a sprawling world, softly lit and geometrically precise, that is only partially knowable. From afar, “Strawberry”’s cute pastel colors signal saccharine cheer; up close, layers of raw plastic and foam show scars of injury and wear. We navigate the world through slivers incompletely perceived. The robot’s perspective is even more constricted, but we share an insurmountable lack.
Au’s family moved from Hong Kong to the United States decades ago. An immigrant’s journey is inherently speculative, animated by the hope that a better life awaits. One forms a fragmentary notion of the anticipated destination from rumors and anecdotes and snippets of media. The path is rarely linear, instead composed of fitful attempts toward safety, belonging, and prosperity in a land whose parameters and rules must be repeatedly learned and discovered. In charting the way forward the past dissolves into suspended memories. One of “Strawberry”’s most arresting elements is a low, wide opening at the base of the robot’s originating cylinder. A TV appears to float near the top of a deep subterranean chamber, looping through videos from the classic Hong Kong channel TVB. Sentimental dramas from romanticized periods of Chinese history are interrupted by jarringly modern commercials suggesting carefree recreation. The disorientation of this improbable space is accomplished through a large mirror projecting the inaccessible interior above into an inverted exterior below. The TV’s contents are correspondingly reversed, its captions thus transformed into a foreign language for all.
In this uncanny pavilion beneath the robot’s home, a ceramic figurine of the longevity god, Shouxing, from Au’s grandmother smiles facing the adjoining structure, the robot’s perennial destination. Humans yearn and venture and get lost. Sometimes you seek to go home only to find it out of reach, nurturing instead a synthetic approximation sheltered from the vicissitudes of truth. The robot vacuum’s clumsy motions are funny and its reasoning is absurdly reductive, but we too are fallible. In “Panda”’s self-contained universe, the robot’s persistence and plight offer a rare, poignant distillation of human experience in mechanical form. Hope is flawed and subjective. Nonetheless we do so, again and again.
“Caitlyn Min-ji Au: Panda” is on view at Shanghai Seminary, 3262 South Morgan, through August 1.
