First impressions
I fell off an Eames chair in a job interview for a dream job with Philips, the consumer electronics giant. Why I fell off? I was offered the job with no qualifications or prior experience.
Debut work
The Swallowable Parfum, a cosmetic pill that works from the inside out, emitting a biologically enhanced fragrance through the skin’s surface. The work was released as a campaign trailer and went viral. Within days, I had offers from leading pharmaceutical companies wanting to be the first in their country to sell the product.
Big break
A four-minute TED talk presenting Parfum and a music video I made with Swedish pop star Robyn [for her 2010 song “Indestructible”].
Galaxy brain
Science and art serve each other when in tandem. The worlds I build tell stories about complex themes, like genetic engineering or artificial intelligence. Stories create memories, and when visualized in familiar and human ways, imaginations hover.
Stranger than fiction
I’m part of a group show in Tel Aviv’s Museum of Holon called State of Extremes. I’m presenting a Future Survival Kit, a story seen through the eyes of a post-apocalyptic sherpa who holds a book about a warning from the past. The work requires two people to engage in an activity, whereby a lo-fi machine hugs you. The firmness of the hug is manually operated by a stranger kneeling beside a body that is sandwiched between blubber-like cushions, where the body is lulled to surrender.
Trust the process
Whatever I make, its purpose has to prepare us for what’s coming. Art is a mechanism to signal and provoke our ideologies and ethics about who we are and where we are headed.
