TA2017

In this project, the 1st year students were challenged to experiment with structures, forms, and materials in two and three dimensions in order to comprehend methods of visual arts development, as well as to be equipped with the necessary resources to freely express their creative potential. Through these works, surrealism, collages, and mixed-media are displayed, which have provided the necessary techniques for them to further define their artistic styles. Simultaneously with these practices, the students were asked to develop a complete documentation for the content they are taught within the course, which is illustrated in a finalized booklet.

This live performance uses chance and play as a means of making decisions, therefore, directly controlling the outcome of the performance. The students imagine a space with different interactive organisms to construct variable zone-shifts, time-shifts and identity- shifts. During the performance, they explore the concepts of self- organization with highly constrained artificial behaviors triggered by their prototypes to calibrate their behaviors within different environments. Using a wide range of behaviors, students learn how changes in human identity and its environment transform the reality around us.

The industrial era vastly transformed our society, having a great impact in automation and labor work. Machines, however, were rarely used in the artistic practice, as they could not demonstrate expressivity and emotion. In the 1960s, Cybernetics reframed the role of the machines within the artistic world, allowing artists and scientists to experiment using this new medium. In this project, the 2nd year students were asked to utilize a range of physical computing and prototyping techniques and to develop an automation system that challenges the role of the artist. Within this technological universe, the artwork becomes an artefact of the algorithmic machines, and the artist transmutes into an engineer. Through the computational logic, action- paintings are created that attempt to extend our understanding of what art is.

Human Behaviour Calibrators

In these selected projects, the students developed human behavior calibrators and media controllers as interactive devices to have a more complex understanding of human beings within their respective ecosystems in relation to other organisms, environment and machines. Using various computational systems, the students investigated the laws of systems at different levels of organization and learnt how changes in different environmental conditions and parameters within a system generate new behaviours in organisms.

For this project, a madhouse has been selected as a theme, due to its unique characteristics. A madhouse is usually an isolated area that creates a feeling of discomfort and unpleasingness. By caging the patients within its facilities, and through unorthodox practices and extreme medication, the institution eliminates their free-will and behavioral expression.

With this problem in mind, our team proceeded in eld research in a mental health center to collect primary data concerning the conditions of the facilities, as well as identifying the range and content of the creative practices the patients do – such as paintings. The research material assisted in developing visual and narrative elements for our virtual world.

The purpose of this work is to immerse the audience into a madhouse environment, which visually contains the emotions and side effects of the mental issues the patients have, in order to provide a deeper understanding and empathy concerning them. It is necessary for the viewers to question if the isolation and elimination of individual eccentricities based on social standards is acceptable, to which level, and to further allow reconsideration and reflection.

With the rapid development of trangenic technology, many people start to worry about some of the negative consequences this might entail. In fact, scientists and biotechnologists have found minor side effects of trangenic meat and vegetables. Whether transgenic human beings would exist in the future has also become a debated issue. To explore the possibility of applying trangenic technology to the mankind and to address the common concern with the social and ethical implications of such possibilities, we simulated in our project genetically modified humans, and with the use of VR technology we are allowed to observe and perceive their behaviors in a unique way.

This project expresses a profound concern of the catastrophic damage that the sea reclamation does to the natural environment. In our project, we bring the audience to an abandoned seaside construction site simulated with Virtual Reality technology and let them destroy the artificial architecture with the virtual axes that can be used with the physical controllers. As the user attempts to make the chaotic construction site to disappear, the sealevel starts to recover and the original landscape emerges. During the intriguing reversal of the sea reclamation process, the audience is able to experience the pleasure of preserving the natural beauty.

This project is a collaboration between the course Technoetic Arts, and Theme Environment Design. The students were asked to develop a physical installation that blends with performative and realtime media technologies. Each installation utilizes a concept that has been refined according to the research students did on interactive and media art, and their challenge was to become provocative, pushing the boundaries of experimental and multidisciplinary practices.

Moist Media III: Material Lab

This course looks at biological systems, and introduces students to the open-ended and unpredictable process of researching and working with living materials. The course is divided up into five modules: 1) Microbial; 2) Insect; 3) Fungus; 4) Organic Materials and 5) The Human Body. It reviews a selection of materials such as bacteria and yeast cultures, mycelium and fungus, silkworms, bioplastics and the human body. Students are required to work with each medium while keeping a lab notebook that acts as a detailed journal of learnings and reflections throughout their processes and experiments. They are encouraged to creatively think about the process and methods of data collection and documentation.

Moist Media – Silk Road

In ancient times, due to the huge regional differences and the under- development of transportation, the trade between countries was far less frequent than it is now. However, in Han Dynasty, China built the Silk Road that boosted the economic exchanges across Asia. In the 20th century, with the rapid development of the Internet and the instant flow of information, a vast scale of trade network starts to take shape. This project aims at representing this evolvement of a simplistic trade model to a more complex one by creating different platforms for the activities of silkworms. The isolation between the moths in the video, echoes the isolation between merchants before the time of the Silk Road. The 3D model in the wooden structure in which moths interact freely, is designed to simulate the online commercial activities and communicational patterns in the Internet era.

Kombucha is a solution created with red tea and sugar, and it contains yeast, acetic acid and lactic acid bacteria. In the process of fermentation, the three bacteria share a symbiotic relationship, which enables the kombucha to generate a new skin. Thus, through this work the artist wants to create a poetic metaphor that embodies the concepts of incarnation, samsara, and multiple universes through the manipulated organic form.

This project explores the concept of message, noise and media in information exchange using a modularized controller. The transmitter hosts an excerpt (in text format) from Jean-Henri Fabre’s Souvenirs Entomologiques (2006). The text is encoded character by character into a 5-bit signal stream and sent via the five laser modules through the insect cell into the receiver. The receiver detects the laser beams with five sensor modules and decodes them into Latin script again. The bug is contributing to the received message every time it blocks a laser beam and causes an unexpected modification. By turning the panel knobs, participants can alter the sound and light conditions and affect the insect’s motion. Moreover, the slider adjusts the sample frequency of the receiver, allowing users to further intervene with the system.

Moist Media – Silk-Man

Human beings and silkworms have completely different perceptual systems, which lead them to act differently as well. This project explores the possibilities that if human beings were given the features of a silkworm (i.e. a round, limbless body, and a weak eyesight), their behavior would be similar to it too. To answer this question, the artist has armed herself with a wearable device (a white suit with two white masks, one camera, and silk), and put herself into a rectangular structure. The activities were documented on the two videos; one demonstrates the perspective of the artist, and the other one the per- spective of the audience. Both videos are contrasted with a silkworm spinning in a cocoon to wrap itself in. Through this comparative study, this work means to explore how the change in perceptual apparatus affects each other’s behavior.

Moist Media – Invaded Consciousness

For this project an automated and well-balanced ecosystem was constructed, in which various organisms develop a symbiotic relationship. With the use of an interactive wearable device, the participants’ brain waves can be sensed, and allow them to intervene into the ecosystem. The brainwaves are able to hack the natural balance of the system and affect its outcomes. In overall, the project attempts to increase awareness about the human intervention not only into this micro-environment, but consider the implications of the natural disorder we manage to bring to this planet.

Materials: The project consists of a mechanical structure, an ecosystem made up of pea seedlings, snails, moss, mushrooms, and an EEG sensor.

Moist Media – Wild Flowers Grow Where They Want

“Wild Flowers Grow Where They Will” was quoted from a famous saying by the American horticulturalist, gardener and artist Rachel Lambert Mellon. As a tribute to Mellon’s work and her respect to the nature, this project attempts to intervene into the wild nature using the techniques the artist was mostly familiar with. To accomplish this, more than 30 kinds of wild flowers have been collected and spread to specific targets around Shanghai, including sere greenbelt that lack of maintenance and protection, in order to increase the biodiversity of the local plants and flowers. By using a custom-made drone system with an added gimbal part, the project aims in spreading the seed collection as a means of social hactivism to demonstrate the fragile boundaries between ecosystem planning, technological development, and artistic practice.

Moist Media – Moth Synthesizer

The project is a sound installation and an electronic control system composed of small compartments interconnected with each other. In each compartment, the courting dance of the moths would trigger the integrated circuit to generate changing sound waves. Data flow between compartments through two parallel transmitting paths: the stomata for pheromone and the wire for potential signals, which is made visible by the light emitted from diodes, giving the audience. The project is created at the intersection between biology, cybernetics and art creativity.