In Good Machine Bad Machine, Koizumi explores how language influences our thoughts and actions. It reveals human vulnerability towards authority and sheds light on the ways in which technologies like Artificial Intelligence are used to shape our daily life and desires, de-stabilizing the definition of what it means to be human.

 

He was inspired by Good Boy Bad Boy (1985), a video work by American artist Bruce Nauman. In Nauman's piece, two actors repeat the same lines with varying emotions. Koizumi replaces the actors with hypnotised subjects who obey the commands a hypnotist is speaking into their earpieces. Rather than performing emotions, the subjects respond automatically like remote-controlled machines. This underscores the human brain's enduring receptiveness to language - even when it precludes autonomous action.

 

Behind the three monitors is a projected image that displays public life in Tokyo, unfolding in the form of a montage of nationalistic moments, which Koizumi had collected since the earthqauake in 2011. With these images, the work reflect on the mechanic nature of both our individual and collective unconsciousness that shape our social realities under the reign of a (non-)human authority.