Work in Progress Video Clip

The shoe is stitched together with multiple pieces of latex rubber cast out of moulds made from my own skin. The shoe's toe and heel raise and lower as it occasionally vibrates/pulsates, and twitches on the floor as if it were still alive. The movement is not constant, and usually causes people to jump back while they are in the middle of leaning in for a closer look.

Artist statement
It's a Nike shoe stapled together with human flesh, twitching...

Other than simply being twisted, this piece comments on issues of sweatshop labour and content ownership. Each piece of skin is therefore different in colour, size, and texture and the Nike Logo is done in white, slapped overtop of all the other colours. Really, either you’re going to get it or you’re not.

While your 10 year old son or daughter whines about not having the coolest shoes for school, another 10 year old on the other side of the world will never need worry about such issues as they won’t get to go to school, they make shoes for 3 cents a day instead. Thus, the shoe represents the lives put into it. People like to ignore the reality of the issue, or come up with simple solutions such as “we’re giving –them- work” thanks, I’m sure the world would fall apart without such generosity. And I’m sure before sweatshops the world crumbled.

If the flesh disturbs you, then the reality behind the issue would disturb you far more if we opened our eyes long enough to see it.
We live in a culture disconnected from what it is doing to itself and others, we choose to ignore rather than deal with the reality we have created for ourselves. This piece ultimately comments on this simple idea.

How it works

V1.1 (Revamped for 2005)
While the V1.0 circuit was good, I felt it was time to updated the internals. So before the Xpace Gallery show, I designed and printed a new baord programmed with all the timings to control the 3 motors.

V1.0
The shoe uses a circuit to interpret signals sent out from an MP3 Player (Rio PMP 300), and converts them into on/off commands which it sends to the motors. The circuit works the same way the VU analyser on a stereo works (the lights that bounce up and down when a song plays). It uses a LM3915n chip but instead of outputting to lights, the signal is converted from a negative pulse, to a positive one, (with a 4049) boosted (with Tip 122's) and then sent to the motors. This gives the appearance of random movement with no need for programming as highs and lows in the song will determine when and how the shoe moves.

Thank you to Bas for the Free Mp3 player, and Thanks to Doug Back for help with the original Circuit.