Give Me a Hand

Give Me a Hand is a co-cooking performance between the artist and a small creature that lives in a chef's hat. The creature watches the world through a camera module and interacts with its surroundings by controlling the artist's hand through electrical muscle stimulation (EMS). It uses GPT-5.6 as its brain: each camera frame produces a structured thought, which is continuously printed by a thermal printer at the back of the hat, forming a paper trail that remains hidden from the artist throughout the performance. The creature is deliberately given a single physical capability, granted specifically for ingredient selection: it can close the artist's fingers. The creature selects among the ingredients on the table with a hidden recipe in mind, planning what it would cook. When the artist's hand comes near an ingredient it wants, her fingers close around it. Once the selection is complete, the cooking belongs to the artist. She improvises a dish from whatever the creature has chosen, often diverging from its hidden agenda. The creature continues watching and occasionally tries to intervene through the same limited gesture. Only once the cooking is over can the artist read the printed record and interpret what the creature had intended and the influence it had tried to exert during the performance. The piece asks what it means to lend a machine one small part of your body and what it can, and cannot, do with it.