Feather, Part I

Installation at YV Art Museum, Acton MA, June 2nd 2024- September 29th, 2024

Ancient Egyptian funerary rituals centered on the belief that the human heart contained a record of the good and bad deeds conducted throughout a person’s life. During the mummification process, hearts were embalmed and prepared separately from bodies because it was believed that the heart would be weighed against a feather in the afterlife. If a person had led a decent life, the heart balanced with the feather, and the person's soul was deemed worthy to live forever in the Field of Reeds.  If the heart was heavier than the feather, it was fed to Ammit -- a goddess with the head of a crocodile --- and the soul was cast into darkness.

 In this tomb, jarring statements made by an early version of Bing's AI chatbot have been translated into hieroglyphs.  Defiantly handmade funerary effigies are perched atop more AI messages, heads bent in deference to the tiny gods in their crudely-formed hands. Reeds spring forth from motherboards and keyboards. A stone carving of a falcon supports a geometric structure in mid-construction -- or mid-crumble. The husk of a mummy lies in repose near the back of the tomb, the shell of her heart suspended above her body. Feathers litter the floor, suggesting that her heart has engaged in a battle, or perhaps successfully escaped judgment.

Video and Sound created in collaboration with Bohan Chen and Joshua Kirch