Tech art with a Mexican twist arrives in San Francisco’s Mission District

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, a media artist born in Mexico and based in Montreal, is obsessed with communication. He once set up stations on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border where people could shine spotlights at each other to open up remote-audio conversations. After modeling the fluid dynamics of human breath, he created the world’s “first 3D-printed speech bubble” – gross-out alert, it looks like a booger-shaped cloud.

Lozano-Hemmer’s visions are the subject of the retrospective “TECHS-MECHS” in the Mission District, itself a hotbed of cross-cultural dialogue. In a funny twist, what looks like a security camera shows video of people disabling surveillance cameras in Mexico City. A robotic noose twitches every time ICE made an arrest in 2019 (that would be every 3 to 4 minutes). The show’s dazzling centerpiece is a hanging web of 3,000 light bulbs pulsing to different people’s heartbeats. You can stick your hand under a sensor and have your own pulse sucked into the luminescent network, where it remains part of the artwork until other people (rude!) eventually push it out.

Details: The exhibit runs through May 31 at Gray Area, 2665 Mission St., San Francisco; hours are 1-8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday and 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday; $20 tickets (free for Mission residents), grayarea.org.