Over the past week as students walked through Andrews Hall on their way to class, they may have done a double take at the collection of objects slowly accumulating in the Andrews Gallery. Robots and mannequins now fill the space, complementing the bare, white walls of the gallery. With the flip of a few switches, the objects spring to life and begin their jerky and mechanized motions.

On one table, plastic pieces of fruit spring forth wildly on metal poles. In the back of the hall, two mannequin torsos sit atop tripod legs rocking back and forth to saw a stuffed pig. Speakers emit melancholy strains of violin music, punctured by the harsh sound effects of chomping and chewing.

The clamor doesn’t end, until someone turns off the switch or the battery dies.

The “Future Shock” exhibition officially opened yesterday. Its robots and mannequins move as part of the exhibition to relay a message of pandemic artificiality. “Future Shock,” one half of an international exchange of art and ideas, is the result of a collaboration between Kinichi Miyazawa and Jun Sugiyama. The students of Tokoyo’s Musashino Art University directed the creation of this installation piece, and coordinating the project with professor of art and sculpture Elizabeth Mead at the College of William and Mary.

“[Future Shock] talks about mercury specifically and the impact of the food we eat, the impact of our choices on the environment, and the impact of fast food on the Japanese diet,” Mead said. The project attempts to synthesize all these issues into one provocative idea.

Under the guidance of their professor Nobutaka Kotake, who cited the music videos of 80s band Devo and jazz musician Herbie Hancock as important visual influences, the students created a work of art emphasizing the constant and cyclical nature of the problems in the industrialization of food. Materials that would fray after repeated use were purposely chosen to mimic the effects of gradual erosion. The disjointed figures, which move continuously, speak to the potentially Orwellian future of factory-produced food.

“The mechanization [of the piece] is very circular and never-ending in its motion,” Mead said. “We need to work together to break these cycles and move away from this detrimental activity.”

The main components of the exhibit were disassembled and shipped from Tokyo, where they were created, to the College. Last Friday, five students arrived from Musashino Art University to set up the exhibit. Miyazawa, Sugiyama and three assistants worked tirelessly to assemble the piece within the confines of the Andrews Gallery.

Emily Mason ’11 and Chelsea Jenkins ’11, who both study Japanese, hosted Miki Tanaka, one of the students from Tokyo, in their room in Landrum Hall. Mason and Jenkins saw the project reconstructed firsthand and formed relationships despite language barriers.

“[Conversation] has been broken, but we get the point across.” Jenkins said. “Miki has been very patient and so nice.”

Both students enjoyed finally seeing the project in action. “It is so intricate, every time you look back at the exhibition, you see more that you didn’t catch the first time through,” she said.

To complete the cross-cultural experience, students of Mead’s class, “Sculpture in the Global Environment: Heavy Metal and the Delta Blues,” created work that is now currently on display at Musashino.

For inspiration, the students looked at two case studies: the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the epidemic of mercury poisoning. The students attempted to examine and communicate the effects of the natural disasters on people’s everyday lives.

Margaret Mays ’09 created “Mercury River” after noticing men fishing in a river they knew was contaminated with mercury. Inspired by the crimson hues of powdered mercury, Mays sought to “bring an awareness to the environmental hazards of mercury poisoning” through the dramatic use of color in her orange-red Tyvek piece.

Ashley Pierce ’10 created an interactive piece, which consisted of a hollow mold of a brain and silver silly putty placed on top of a pedestal, where viewers could make a mold of the brain. Because silly putty begins to melt and morph instantly, Pierce said the piece acts as a literal representation of how mercury affects the human brain.

The constant juxtaposition of cultural differences between the United States and Japan pervades the entire show, down to the minutia. After watching the mechanizations malfunction, the Japanese students rushed to find a transformer to convert American electrical current to a level compatible with Japanese electronics.
Mead said exploring the perspective of the western influence on the east, and the eastern influence on the west was a key goal of the project.

This exchange of works to exhibit is just one step for the Mercury s Global Inquiry Group — an organization promoting research and awareness of the harmful effects of mercury poisoning — headed by professors in departments ranging from biology to film studies. Mead, a founding member, said that this three-year project is about “all of us thinking across boundaries and borders to confront some of the problems that we face in the world.”

Editor’s Note: The Musashino Art University was incorrectly labelled as Musashiro University, and was corrected April 8.