Art Research

Tao-machine: Bridging Taoist Symbolic Logic and Computational Image-processing Syntaxes through the Model of Speculative Process Metaphysics

This generative art project and research take forms in the analogous analysis between western process philosophical thoughts and Chinese Taoist symbolism as an analytic-interpretive strand to investigate self-regulating moving images as automation of “creativity”, which evokes the Taoist aesthetic called “confusion”. The twofold virtual system of Tao-machine is bifurcated into two interconnected subsystems representing “Actuality” and “Potentiality” in which “Potentiality” is computed as the regulating syntaxes guided by the semantics in Taoist symbolic logic. The art project “Confused Objects” produced by Tao-machine, arouses the aestheticization of this convergent model of both western speculative process metaphysics and Taoist symbolism through a series of dynamic visual abstraction.

All is a transient dream: a journey exploring Jellyfish’s shared consciousness through intra-active audio-visual performance

In Daniel Quinn’s novel ‘Ishmael’, an interspecific dialogue unfolds between a jellyfish and a gorilla. The conversation is about the evolution of different species. As a result, the jellyfish reluctantly took the honour being a pinnacle of the evolutionary process because they proceed strictly on the basis of ‘observation, logic and the scientific method’. These 96 percent water entities mock the omnipresent aggrandisement of human beings as the essence of all creatures. Jellyfish are bio-machines, emotional AI and a multi-layered interconnected conscious web.
With the help of computation, ‘All is a transient dream’ simulates this temporal-spatial dialogue between ‘gorilla’ and ‘jellyfish’, physical and virtual, organisms and machines. Hence in this project, performers and an interactive system that materialises itself through the imitation of jellyfish as well as the dancing motion of the performer. This interactive performance intends to illustrate a dynamic relationship between organisms and machines through a series of visual effects, free-flowing choreography and special commissioned soundtrack.

Fluid Equilibrium : sensing with biophotonic field through technoetic performance

In 2006, Roy Ascott coined the concept ‘Moistmedia’ — a new media form consists of dry computation and wet biological process. Ascott’s definition led to more open discourses about the possibility of marking out a pathway to metaphysical reality through navigating the consciousness of biophotonic-telematic networks in interdisciplinary projects across art and computation. In Donna Haraway's “A Cyborg Manifesto” she writes ‘ A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction.’ The correlation between computational and biological processes has since been unprecedentedly emphasised to demystify the mystery of spirituality. Simultaneously the entanglement between art and science begins to unravel itself through the intangible border between the biophotonic field and telematic field. According to field theory, everything could be perceived as signals — electromagnetic waves within section of spectrum, because of its immanent atomic and electronic structures. Under these circumstances, this essay intends to explore and speculate on the potential of the biophotonic field partially functioning as an information network, and to propose an experimental concept called “fluid equilibrium”— a resonant state in multiple-fields — as a potent perspective to perceive and analyse the multiple-field reality with the help of computation.