Artist; Troublemaker; Mr.
2023, Installations
Datarium is a series of generative animation/video installations. In this series, I imagine a digital world inhabited by digital creatures. Many portals, some of them appear to be screens and some of them look like everyday objects, bridge the gap between our reality and the digital domain. Each portal offers a unique glimpse into specific areas of the digital world, revealing diverse ecosystems teeming with digital life forms.
Datarium is the result of a series of extensive studies on diverse natural ecosystems, especially aquatic ones. It is a re-interpretation and re-imagination of the world we occupy, an exploration of alternative forms of organisms, and a question of the essence of life.
Click here to visit the project website.
Exhibited at RCA2023
2023, Generative Audio Visual
For Pint of Science Creative Exhibition in Nottingham
2023, Digital Writing
本作品深受葉旭耀的作品流/言的影響。葉旭耀是我在創意媒體學院時的教授之一。在流/言中，他用電腦程式不斷地重構劉曉波的名言，我的最後陳述中的那句「我沒有敵人」。程式重複地將重構出的字句列印在螢幕上，一層接一層。慢慢地，其他字變成了全黑或全白的方格，只有人字不斷重複而突出顯眼。但最後，人也漸漸被不斷複寫的文字埋沒。
反覆書寫這一行為具有超強的衝擊力。它象徵著一種近乎偏執的執念，卻仍然給予觀眾足夠的空間去想像產生這種執念的原因——是因為不想忘記，或是出於某種強烈的感情。這正是我喜愛這種表現方式的原因。
在本作品中，我讓電腦程式不斷地抄寫波蘭詩人辛波絲卡(Wisława Szymborska)的一首詩，時代的孩子(Children of The Age)，的節選。香港著名獨立樂隊My Little Airport在他們2021年的音樂會上朗讀了這首詩的部分，作為對經歷2019年的社會運動和2020年的世紀疫情後的香港新常態的回應。在無數次的重複後，機器也變得怠倦，書寫的內容漸漸地出現錯字和錯句。而最後它竟像失去了理智，開始胡亂地書寫。在這一個過程中，「政治的」三個字在文字堆中浮現，展示出文本的統計學特性，而後漸漸被埋葬在無序的字句中。
我將作品命名為流水落花。流水落花典出李後主的「流水落花歸去也，天上人間」。如果你對香港的流行文化比較熟知，可能會想到黃偉文的歌詞，以及賈勝楓的電影。流水落花是完全不同的一種取態，雖也懷念，但全無牽掛，與作品中電腦程式的行為形成強烈的反差。執著以致瘋狂，或是放下然後淡忘，或者是這個後XX時代最大的問題。
2023, Digital Writing
This work is inspired by Yip Yuk Yiu’s work False Words. Yip Yuk Yiu was my professor at the School of Creative Media. In that work, he created a computer program to continuously reconstruct Liu Xiaobo’s famous quote, “I have no enemies(我沒有敵人)”. The program repeatedly prints the result on a screen, layer by layer. Slowly, the other characters became fully colored blocks, and only the character 人(human) stood out to be recognizable. But in the end, it is still gradually buried by the words that are constantly printed on top of it.
The act of writing over and over on top of the text produces huge tension. It symbolizes an extreme obsession but still gives the audience plenty of room to imagine where the obsession comes from—whether it’s because someone doesn’t want to forget, or because of some strong emotions. That’s why I love this way of presentation.
In this work, I made the computer program to continuously transcribe part of the poem by Polish poet Wisława Szymborska, Children of the Age. The famous Hong Kong indie band My Little Airport read part of this poem at their 2021 concert as a response to the new normal in Hong Kong after the social movement in 2019 and the epidemic in 2020. After countless repetitions, the machine became tired, and typos and mistakes gradually appeared in the written content. In the end, it seemed to lose its mind totally and began to write nonsense. In the process, the word “political” emerges from the repeated letters, showing the quantitative characteristic of the text, then gradually gets buried under the random tokens.
I named the work 流水落花 Floating Petals. 流水落花(floating petals on flowing water) is a Chinese saying, first written by Li Yu, in his verse “流水落花歸去也，天上人間(Petals floating on streams, returning to their end. The past and now is like the haven and the earth)”. If you are familiar with Hong Kong pop culture, you may also think of Wyman Wong’s lyrics and Sing-Fung Ka’s movies. 流水落花 resembles the opposite of obsession, which forms a strong contrast with the behavior of the computer program in the work. To be obsessed and then insane, or to let go and then forget, is the biggest problem in this post-XX era.
2023, Generative Animation
Plasmodata is a generated animation based on the study of slime mould.
Slime mould is an interesting life form. For most of their lifetime, they are free-living single-celled individual entities. However, those simple cells developed a very sophisticated system of communication using acrasins which is highly similar to the nervous system of animals. In a sense, the slime mould cells form a coordinated “brain” which appears in highly intricate structures.
Inspired by recent studies of how slime mould transmit information, I digitally simulated their behaviors. These simple virtual lives collaboratively generate convoluted and aesthetically pleasing visuals.
Plasmodata is a sandbox, a cosmos, a question of our definition of life and intelligence.
Exhibition view at WAAITT2023
2023, 生成動畫
Plasmodata 是基於對粘菌的研究而創作的生成動畫。
粘菌是一種有趣的生命形式。在他們一生的大部分時間裡，他們都是自由生活的單細胞個體。然而，這些簡單的細胞能使用化學信息素構成一個非常複雜的與動物神經系統高度相似的通信系統。從某種意義上說，粘菌細胞形成了一個協調的“大腦”，以高度複雜的結構呈現。
受最近關於粘菌如何傳遞信息的研究的啟發，我對它們的行為進行了數字模擬。這些簡單的虛擬生命共同生成了這些復雜而美麗的圖像。
Plasmodata 是一個沙盒，一個宇宙，一個關於我們對生命和智能的定義的質疑。
於WAAITT2023的展覽現場
2023, 裝置
聯覺機械提供給觀眾一種特別的多感官體驗。裝置邀請觀眾觸摸蜂巢格子中的不同材料製成的雕塑。隱藏在雕塑內部的傳感器將觸摸轉化為聲音和象徵流動性和柔軟性的生成圖像。該作品邀請人們通過相應的三種感官探索物料的不同特性。正如一位觀眾所說，“（這）就像我在用手指聽，用耳朵看。”
為Beyond Surface—Tactile Presence x Tate Modern Late 2023 年 3 月製作
2023, Installation
part of The Hive
Mechanic Synesthesia provides a special multi-sensory experience. The audience is invited to touch the sculptures made with different materials residing in the cells of The Hive. Sensors hidden inside the sculptures translate the touch into sounds and generative visuals representing fluidity and softness. The installation invites people to explore the different materiality of the sculptures through the three corresponding senses. As one of the audience said, “(it is) like I am hearing through my fingers and seeing through my ears.”
For Beyond Surface – Tactile Presence x Tate Modern Late March 2023
2023, video collage
with Ophir Amitay, Agnes Wu, Xianshuo Zhai
We watch a few hundred videos from conspiracy/fake-news channels on YouTube and cut out the clips of them saying words like “actually”, “absolutely”, and “really” to peek into the linguistic structures of those videos – how do they convince people to believe in their narrative and “truth”.
Premiere on the CAP symposium 2023 – Platform