MUSIC FOR EGGS
(2018)Babypod intravaginal speaker, mp3 player, headphones
Music for Eggs is a string quartet for human egg cells to be played to them on the Babypod, an intravaginal speaker designed for gestating fetuses. Babypod was developed based on the long-standing assumption that music, particularly Western classical music, stimulates child development. This belief has led to products such as albums for babies (e.g. Baby Beethoven) and more recently has been leveraged as the rationale for technologies that play music to children before they are even born.
Pregnancy devices like Babypod facilitate particular kinds of reproductive control. They reinforce dominant narratives of “culture” and of who counts as a “good” mother, shifting mothering pressures to earlier stages of childhood development. Music for Eggs, then, pushes the technology to its logical extreme, using it to play music to eggs which have not yet been fertilized. For the work, Livio commissioned and closely collaborated on the composition of a string quartet, an iconic classical medium, to produce a piece she would want her eggs to hear. In doing so, she also considered her broader relationship to narratives of bodily autonomy—as most or perhaps all of her eggs will die. The piece is therefore also developed in reverence for those eggs which will never become fertilized.
Music for Eggs is the first work developed for the research project Tech in Women.
Supported by:
-
Eloise Timmons Memorial Award
- Beverly Sears Graduate Student Grant
Embryonic, NEST Studio for the Arts, Boulder, Colorado (2018).
Notes:
- Cited in: Laura Devendorf, Kristina Andersen, Aisling Kelliher. 2020. “The Fundamental Uncertainties of Mothering: Finding Ways to Honor Endurance, Struggle, and Contradiction.” ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, Vol. 27, No. 4, Article 26.
- With: Leslee Smucker (violin), Magee Capsouto (violin), Allyson Stibbards (viola), Cecilia Swanson (cello), JP Merz (composition)
