Video Documentation
1' 43''

AWARD
Juried Selection
The 23rd Japan Media Arts Festival
Shortlisted with Honorable Mention
Lumen Prize 2020
EXHIBITION
IEEE VIS art program 2020
Siggraph Asia Art Gallery 2020
China VISAP 2020
CREDIT
Art Concept Direction
Virtual Reality Worldbuilding
Visualization & Sound Design
Creative Coding
+ Weidi Zhang
Intelligent System Design
Creative Coding
+ Donghao Ren
Humans and machines are in constant conversations. Humans start the dialogue by using programming languages that will be compiled to binary digits that machines can interpret. However, Intelligent machines today are not only observers of the world, but they also make their own decisions. If A.I imitates human beings to create a symbolic system to communicate based on their own understandings of the universe and start to actively interact with us, how will this recontextualize and redefine our coexistence in this intertwined reality?
This VR project provides an immersive exploration in semantic human-machine reality generated by an intelligent system in real-time through perceiving the real-world via a camera [located in the exhibition space]. Inspired by Cangjie, an ancient Chinese legendary historian (c.2650 BCE), invented Chinese characters based on the characteristics of everything on the earth, we trained a neural network that we call Cangjie, to learn the constructions and principles of over 9000 Chinese characters. It perceives the surroundings and transforms it into a collage of unique symbols made of Chinese strokes. The symbols produced through the lens of Cangjie, tangled with the imagery captured by the camera are visualized algorithmically as abstract pixelated semiotics, continuously evolving and compositing an ever-changing poetic virtual reality. Cangjie is not only a conceptual response to the tension and fragility in the coexistence of humans and machines but also an artistic imagination of our future language in this artificial intelligent era.
Cangjie 倉 頡
Teaser 25 secs


