Bad Mother / Good Mother: an audiovisual performance

Bad Mother / Good Mother: an audiovisual performance

Bad Mother / Good Mother

Bad Mother / Good Mother is an audiovisual performance involving a projection, a modified electronic breast pump as a sound generator, and a sound-reactive LED pumping costume. The project has four songs that critically explore technologies directed specifically at women like breast pumps and fertility extending treatments such as egg-freezing (social freezing). Depending on the song, the breast pump is either a solo instrument or part of an arrangement. The idea is to use workplace lactation as a departure point to uncover a web of societal politics and pre-conceived perceptions (pun intended) of ideal and non-ideal motherhood.

The audiovisual performance has four 'songs' consisting of sound and connected visuals that are projected during the performance. In the first and last song, the breast pump is treated as the solo instrument, in the two middle songs, the breast pump sound is part of an arrangement. The first song is about the stresses of pumping breastmilk at work. The second song is about maternity leave and the third song is about egg-freezing. The fourth and last song is about the repetitiveness of the pumping routine.

The costume is an exaggerated pumping top. Around the cutouts where the breast pump shields attach to the breast, it has seven rows of LEDs pointing outward like a star. The LEDs are attached to a microcontroller board. Each arm represents a frequency band. The LEDs therefore pulse along with the sound. However, the bands are lit individually depending on the energy content in this frequency band. It is designed similar to a rock star's costume. It ironically glamorizes the profoundly unglamorous act of using a breast pump in a world where women are encouraged to breastfeed or pump in private rather than use their pump in public.

Here is my SIGGRAPH paper: "Bad Mother / Good Mother: The Poetics and Politics of the Sounds of Invisible Labor"

Live Performer's Meeting 2019, Rome, Italy.

New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) 2019 - Salão de Atos, Porto Alegre, Brazil.