Prototyping Violence is an artistic research, which investigates how materials and living systems carry the memory of human violence. Functioning as a framework, the project explores how artistic experimentation with chemical and biological processes can reveal and re-mediate the ecological trauma left by Agent Orange and other forms of environmental warfare.

Between 1961 and 1970, the U.S. military sprayed herbicides containing TCDD (dioxin) to defoliate forests and agricultural land. While the immediate destruction was visible, many effects continue to accumulate slowly in soil, vegetation, and human bodies.

Building on her earlier projects Scent from Heaven and Garden of Entanglement, Hiền Hoàng works with corrosion, residue, and mycelium growth as acts of material transformation. These processes mirror the over-activation of energy that defines both chemical destruction and psychological trauma. Each corroded surface or fungal growth becomes a form of material witnessing—a record of how matter absorbs and remembers harm.

The performance Lullaby moves between violence and gestures of witnessing and care. It reflects on whether care, when it continues, can shift or interrupt the totality of violence. The work brings together a three-channel video and sound composition, drawing on sonified electrical signals from mycelium, acceleration data from trees, and a humming lullaby. The melody draws from the artist’s memory of her mother’s lullaby.

In conclusion, Prototyping Violence proposes an artistic framework to sense and re-mediate ecological trauma in post-Agent Orange landscapes —an inquiry into how matter corrodes, heals, and remembers.

---