Connected,but alone?

Shanghai,China
experinmental art/behavior
Media: interactive installation
Theme: cybernetics, social relationship, media change, social psychology, Internet addiction
Group work with: Roo Xue
Timeline: 8 months
Oct.2018-May.2019

“Connected,but alone?” focuses on the way social media shape the social relationship among people and how people’s psychology and behavior are changed by social media. The relations between self, others and network are identified by presenting the influence of social media on people’s social behavior and psychology. In addition, whether it is social techniques and user behavior that lead to group social networking loneliness is investigated by means of interactive installation.




Metaphor of cyberspace & reality
Cyberworld and reality are created as two spaces in this environment. The cyberworld exsits as a shape of a telephone booth, which is made up of four pieces of glasses and one single-sided mirror wallpaper, thereby showing that this is a space for external exchange. The transparent glasses and single-sided mirror wallpaper represent the social media screens people usually contact with. When an audience walks into this transparent, confined and isolated space, he/she will communicate with others online. The transparent glasses and single-sided mirror wallpaper suggest that we are standing watching when one audience is surfing online. In this context,the phone booth as a metaphor  for communication in a space. The glass is an analogy to the screens of various social applications.The unidirectional glass part shows that when you go online, our behavior is in a state of  being onlookers, but we can’t know how the outside sees us, which further exacerbates our misunderstanding of online interaction. We think this is ironic since the seemingly interconnection turns out to be “isolation”. It has reflected the social phenomenon and people’s psychological state of “connected but alone”.


Like behavior and Sound interaction
The participants will simulate the behavior of “taking the photos” and “like other photo” online. When one participant walks into the interior space, which means he is in the status of online in the virtual space. At the same time, in the real space, he is watched by other audience in the external space.
In addition, we reinterpret the relationship between the action of “like others photos” and our social behaviors. The origin idea of “like” button conveys the positive feedback and the subtext of “I am paying attention to you”. However, in the online environment, the meaning of praise changes with people's behavior.  “Like” can be a polite praise, or it can be genuinely appreciated, or it may be ironic , or it can be liked by many people but no feedback. We praise the possible meanings of “like”, convert the subtext of different people into sound as output and play them randomly, to make the audience form an interaction in misunderstanding.


see more progress here
Mr.Nobody

Shanghai,China
VR Game(5 mins)
VR/Animation/Video
Jan.2018
“Mr.nobody” is a conceptual art game where participants take the virus as the first perspective to launch an attack on the human immune system. The main scenes are phagocytosis of red blood cells and entry into the nucleus of the human body.
This game aims to think about whether artists can use technology to amplify people's understanding of the micro world and enhance people's emotional experience.
Meanwhile,it also offer a speculative perspective on the future healthcare experience scenario.
Chaotic

Shanghai,China

Art Machine/Interactive installation
Work with: Jun Lee 

Oct.2018-May.2019

In the industrial era, machines were seldom used in artistic practice because machines can not demonstrate expressivity and emotion. In the 1960s, cybernetics reframed the role of the artistic world, allowing artists and scientists to experiment using this new medium. “Chaotic” aims to develop an automation system through physical computing and prototyping techniques that challenge the role of the artist. The artwork becomes an artifact of the algorithms machines, and artist transmutes into an engineer. The action paintings produced by the machine’s computational logic extend our understanding of what art is.



Prototype










For the last prototype, the drawing machine could produce complex geometric patterns via multiple inputs modules ( knobs，sliders and switches ), as a human intervention into the pure mechanical creation.
However, we began to think about how to use other media and multiple ways to express visualizations, so in the last version, we thought of using sound as the main medium. I combined drawing trajectory on paper with sound, laser, and specular reflection to create new tracks.




In October 2017, we took participated in the “Shenzhen MakerFaire”.The photos above are some visitors interacting with our works. In this project, I met lots of challenges but also gained a lot.l get new inspirations and master new skills through combine different materials, elements and construct more artwork in constant experimentation.







Hive

Shanghai,China
Sound Sculpture
Group work with: Roo Xue,Faust

Oct.2016

“Hive” is an automatic sound installation with magnet. Itexplores the relationship among human movenment,  environment and material. The front of the installtion is a blend of internal and external environments. The magnets are used to simulate the sound effects of the bee colony, so that the visitors can feel like they are in the real hive.
Sound Calibrator

Shanghai,China

Interactive sound system

Jan.2016

“Sound Calibrator”, studies control’s communication between human behavior and automatic machine. This is done through the interactive method of man-machine, to establish a new model of cybernetics which is based on system and environment interaction, emphasizing system’s purpose and finding some new rules of human behavior: Perception does not control behavior, but behavior control perception. Cybernetics makes us have a new understanding of life & complex system: All life is a negative feed- back control system organization, controlled by the variable conditions all the time, the control mechanism is the essence of life.



In this box design part, I have added three buttons of time and four buttons for emotions, one volume slider, four mode changing buttons, a switch and a screen. Meanwhile, this machine is equipped a earphone device, so the participants can have a better aural effect. 



The software I use Max/Msp and Arduino, and I’ve chosen a lot of sound clips. The main sound sources come from the city, nature, and society. In this system, I divided it into two parts, one part is the machine system. It concludes two elements, one is the “Time”, the other is the “Activity Index”, this part is setting by the algorithm; another system is participant system, which is obtained by the above two elements (i.e. “Time” & “Activity Index”), the feedback results will be instructed participants to make a behaviour. For example, when the participants stand in front of the calibrator,  and if he chose time: “8 AM”, and his current activity index, such as the “low state”, then the machine give a feedback, it may be a sound filled with activity, such as “singing sound” or “laughter of children”. The “Activity Index” of low, high, is contrary to the received sound. If the result does not meet the mental expectations, he can choose the mode (Nature , Animal, Society, Human) until the sound he want to hear. Through this process, the machine can form a multi interactive loop. For participants, this process is controllable, they can adjust the volume of the sound and the change of mode. The change mode is randomly because the viewer will not know what the selected sound is, so you can get a desired result by constantly calibrating it.
Glasgow, United Kingdom | Shanghai, China.