Excerpt

Tucked away at the back of Vilma Gold gallery’s Armory Show booth is a sculpture that tweets your picture, so you don’t have to do it yourself: Lynn Hershman Leeson’s HYBRID MUTANT #2 (1966–2017). The pictures wind up on the Twitter @batofaneyebot, which is supposedly controlled by a user named Icu Cme.

The sculpture is one of Hershman Leeson’s early works. Made during the 1960s, it similar to a group of works known as the “Breathing Machines,” wax casts of the artist’s face that appear to breathe or speak, thanks to hidden speakers. This work has a butterfly pinned to it and rests on a purple cloth.

Affixed to the pedestal for the work is a camera that captures visitors’ images and posts them online. It’s not always accurate—on Twitter, you’ll see a lot of photos of the ceiling that the piece took—but it does manage to surprise. Among the many tweets the sculpture has posted is one of the artist herself.