Software, based on Max8,
Infinite generated noise using only oscillators, from pure numbers.
If you want to download the patch, click here.
E-Shredder
2021, Software
Visit The Work
Using Firefox or Chrome is recommended, for Safari version lower than 15.2, fatal bugs might occur.
Visit the NFT of This Work
E-Shredder is a webpage/piece of code, which shows you copies of the most recent sold NFTs, and gradually “destroy” them.
More interestingly, itself is an NFT too, so if you buy it, you can witness it destroying itself.
More details: here
DiVision
2021, Installation
DiVision is a recent outcome of my research of generative art with non-digital elements. In the installation, a customized projection system with prisms, beam splitters, and mirrors is used to create colorful and multi-layer immersive visuals from a digital projector projecting single-channel black and white images.
It is called DiVison because, in the system, the light beams coming out from the digital projector would be divided and altered through the beam splitters and prisms. After setting up the system, I then composed the black and white computer-generated graphic with the concept of division.
Visit the project page here
Selected Generative Graphics
2021-2022, Digital Graphics
Click on the titles to view the live versions of the works. Recommended to use Chrome or Firefox.
Platystomata Poisoned
Accident happens inevitably. During a leak some substances from ourside enter digital world no.05A35. This specific instance of Platystomata was found after the incident.
意外總是不可避免。在一次洩露事件中我們這邊的某些物質進入了數字世界05A35。這一個特殊的Platystomata個體就是在那次事件之後發現的。
Ommatoporifera
We found Ommatoporifera in a hidden corner, somewhere like Mariana Trench on the earth, in the digital world no.05A35. We still don’t know we should call this instance (or these instances) of Ommatoporifera it or they. But seems that the division is not a form of reproduction.
我們在數字世界05A35的某個角落，類似地球上的馬里亞納海溝的地方，發現了Ommatoporifera。我們依然不知道我們發現的是一個個體還是很多個個體的集合。但是它或它們的分裂看起來並不是一種生殖行為。
Platystomata
Platystomata is the first one of its family we found in the digital world no.05A35. Due to unknown risks for it and us, don’t let it out.
Platystomata是我們在編號05A35數字世界中觀察到的第一個它們這一科的東西。基於未知的風險，不要放它出來。
Net
From Cells To Cells
Mole Kingdom
Lines
Bezier
Spline
Beat Wave
2021, Installation
Visitors’ heartbeats will be detected and recorded by a customized circuit and DIY sensors. Then the data is used to generate sound and visuals. The visuals will be projected to a shallow, reflective dish filled with water through a triangular prism. A speaker is placed under the dish through which the sound is played to disturb the water, then deform the projected graphic.
By visualizing the invisible heartbeats and using this very personal data as the input of a computer-free generative system, a connection between the visitor and this piece is established. This project also tries to echo the theme of generative art made with physics rules, which I have been interested in and working on for a period of time.
Internet Graveyard
Web base, software system, 2021
Follow the grave digging bot on Twitter (It has stopped being active on Twitter due to the new policy Elon Musk brought to Twitter, but it is still making graves. It might move to Mastodon in the future.)
The Internet, as one of the essential systems or things in human society today, is incredibly young. The first website that everyone can saw was created in 1991, which’s creation also marked the birth of the Internet we are so used to nowadays.
So, this year, this dear friend of ours turns 30. In Chinese culture, entering one’s 30s is called 而立, which means one has entered the golden age of their life and has obtained knowledge and skills for him/her/them to create his/her/their own values.
The Internet grew much faster than us human, as of now (17 May 2021, 6:31 pm UTC +8). There has been 491,720,368 registered domain, and this number keep going up every millisecond.
Internet Graveyard is a project to try to define and keep “memory” of the Internet. Only 251,223,483 domains out of the 491,720,368 ones are active, which means about 50% of the domains, and the websites on them, are gone.
In 2010, Ulf Schleth create a website for people to bury their files call /death/null. This is the direct inspiration for me to create this project. Schleth wrote on the about page of /death/null: “it’s for digital romanticists, it’s about living and dead ideas and everything in between.” The idea behind Internet Graveyard is similar, but not the same: Internet Graveyard is about memory and memento. In the Pixar film Coco, one becomes truly dead when no one in the world remembers him/she/they. Maybe it’s the same for a website.
A little bot, creating graves to memorize those websites that no longer exist and announce their death on Twitter. It works days and nights, but making a grave takes 12 hours, so it can only make two graves a day. At the same time, there are 250 million sites that are already dead, and this number goes up every minute. The job is never gonna be finished, but the poor little bot still digging, making a grave for every dead site, no matter how small it was, where it was registered in and what language it used. —— I think this scenario is sadly romantic and poetic, and that’s exactly what I want to do in this project.
Links
怪力亂神 New Myth
Web based, 2020
Open this work in a new tab to enjoy it.
Generated text according to 山海經 and 博物誌.
山海經 (ShanHanJing, The Book Of Mountains and Seas) and 博物誌 (BoWuZhi, The Encyclopaedia of Strange Things) are ancient Chinese books that describe myths and mountain, people, strange things in myths. They are also two of the first books that I read as a little boy that deeply impress me with all the stories that appear to be super cool and novel to a little kid. At that time I would be scared because I thought 刑天 (a character in 山海經, he kept fighting after his head is cut off and used his nipples as eyes and his navel as mouth (to yell)) is real.
For a long time in China, and I would say even now, the books like those two are described as books that are useless, because they write about monsters and non-realistic things, but not “serious” theories or “useful” techniques, which is contrary to Confucius’ words (“子不語怪力亂神”). But in my childhood and even now, they give me joyful experience.
They wonder outside the mainstream, finding value in the outside to tease at the pedantic mainstream. They ,also, in a way, represent the unlimited imagination, which I think is lack in today.
As a reader of these two books, I am surprised to see the outcome of the algorithm, it’s something familiar, yet new. It’s happy to see 鮫人 (they are half fish half human, their tear will become pearl) from 博物誌 and 相柳 ( he has 9 heads and a dark-green snake body) in 山海經 appear in a same story. I also want to give a interesting experience for those who have not read the books yet. I hope the generated stories can inspire their imagination, lead them into a strange but colourful world.
Published in ELC4
Use Rita library; text from 中國哲學書電子化計劃 https://ctext.org and 中華古詩文古書籍網 https://www.arteducation.com.tw; pictures from 新浪 sina.com; a sound from free sound.org; more details in code comment
Expanded Theatre
Performance, 2021
In short, Expanded Theatre is a performance project merging science and art, in which sound, visual elements, and the hydrodynamic quantum analogs are involved.
When I saw the video of walking droplets for the first time, I was shocked and amazed. The phenomenon is like a glitch in the Matrix, giving such a feeling of unreal; but at the same time, the elegant bouncing, walking, dancing droplets also create a unique aesthetic. As the video went on, I started to imagine the bath as a stage in a theatre, and the droplets as performers presenting themselves to me. Thus, I came up with the name “Expanded Theatre”. During my experiments of recreating the phenomena with soap and water, I observed the ways of how the droplets move, and the imagination changes: they are more like people dancing freely and uninhibitedly in a nightclub than rigid performers on a formal and dignified stage. So, I decided to make it into a performance that includes DJ, VJ, living coding, and the incredible droplets, but the name “Expanded Theatre” is kept, as I thought it still describes the work well, and it’s cool.
In 2019 I had a chat with an artist in Zurich and he said that in all the art and science projects, the artists seem to tend to just grab what the scientists have found as material/media of their work. I try to do this project in another way: at first, I did a lot of experiments, and really tried to understand the phenomenon as well as the mechanism behind it, and tried to get inspiration for the art project in the experimenting process. I think this might be a better way: with more understanding and knowledge from the science part, art and science merge better, and the result is more surprising.
Below are some of the notes of the experiments.
Demos:
Over Growth
(proposal) Video for ICC tower, 2020
“The crazily spreading vines on the building are the sweet revenge on the expanding urban area that is nibbling the wild.”
Animated images, generated according to special algorithms, as an abstract representation of how giant vines might possibly grow on the skyscraper’s surfaces are shown on the surfaces via the facade.
By making the vines climbing on ICC tower, I want to address the conflicts between human and nature, urban and wild, us and the other. The images remind us a possible ending of the conflicts, a future that we fail to build a harmony relationship with nature.
Nature always wins. We are all just a part of it.
Chaotic Void
installation; size various, 2020
Chaotic system and fractals are some of the mosts advanced fields of mathematic researches and they are, very likely, the hidden rules that shaping our world.
When humans think they mastered the knowledge about the world, they try to play the role of God. From artificial life to another biosphere, human beings are simulating, or creating another, nature.
This work aims to create an immersive space of generated images and sounds, that give reaction to changes of the environment, temperature, humidity, human/animal passing. Remember what those theories tell us: any minimal action can lead to a brighter future, or the extinction of humanity.