2024, Ink on Paper by Robot
Folds
Ripples
Folds & Ripples
Datarium0FF00-0FF05
2024, Installation
Datarium 0FF00 – 0FF05 are the first artificial datariums created in the Digital Infiltration Prevention Lab (DIPL). The purpose of creating them is to isolate singular digital creature species for study. The first species we isolated in Datarium 0FF00 and Datarium 0FF01 was Chromociliaris. After that, scientists have successfully isolated several kinds of Plasmodata in Datarium 0FF02 and Datarium 0FF03. The research has been stuck for a long time since then, only until very recently did scientists manage to separate individuals of Platystomata and Ommatoporifera in Datarium 0FF04 and Datarium 0FF05.
For more information about the work please visit the Datarium website.
Chromociliaris @ An Undefined Covariable
Datarium
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
流水落花Floating Petals
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.
Plasmodata
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
Mechanic Synesthesia @ Tate Modern
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
Platystomata Poisoned @ Southmere Lake
2023, Public Installation
Digitalizing Akira Minagawa
2022 – ongoing, Digital animation
Akira Minagawa is famous for his insistence on using a hand-drawing process for his textile design.
I created algorithms to try to recreate similar textile textures from purely 0s and 1s, questioning the possibility of digital media and asking the following questions: Can we recreate everything digitally? If so, does it also means that the “real” world we are in can also be another kind of “digital”?
Visit the animations here
Auto Capital
Sonification of live stocks price and the air quality indexes in the cities where the stocks are traded.
Global market is one of the peak creations of capitalism. From New York to Tokyo, then Shanghai, Hong Kong and London. Trading never ends in a day. Many people see this never-stop flow of money, or more exactly, numbers, as the most successful symbol of the globalization of this century.
The AQI (Air Quality Index) data seems to be completely irrelevant to the stocks data. But there was a subtle relation in history, between instrualization, which makes the today global stock market possible, and the environmental issue. It has been well elaborated how developed regions should be responsible for the pollution they make in history, and how the whole global capital system is fueled by burning tons of unnecessary energy.
If you want to download the patch, click here.