the state of the world in three acts
Video, 2025
About the artwork
in this piece of the trio of works, the smiley faced characters start to become more animalistic and wild. one is at the point of not being able to hide their state behind the mask, crying blood. there is an attempt at healing, through smiling and dancing, but whatever has happened has spawned something new, the slithering smileys and we don't know yet whether they are good or bad. in my mind they are neither...yet... they just are something new and we have to wait and see.
visuals created using luma photon & ray2, pika, clipdrop, freepik, runway & clipchamp for editing
AI generated audio by littlecakes using udio edited in audacity.
Audio explanation
Listen to littlecakes discuss this work.
littlecakes is a thinly veiled alias. She is a Japanese woman living in the West. Her work using AI explores her experience as a native to both cultures, nostalgia, imagined folklore, and creating her own special space somewhere between sticky, messy, sweet, nightmarish, and the paranormal.
As an artist using her irl name, she has exhibited work or performed at venues as varied as a Mexican restaurant in Toronto and a sports bar in Boston, to institutions such as Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and White Columns in New York. She has been a visiting lecturer at Rhode Island School of Design and at Pratt Institute. She ran a gallery out of her apartment for several years which was reviewed and featured in The New York Times and other publications. She was also the buyer and art director for a store/gallery in Tokyo for 10+ years featuring weird and wonderful artist made goods. She took a hiatus from art to pursue working with animals and was inspired to come back to art after finding and becoming involved in the web3 community.