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Mirroring Loss creates a one-person experience to contextualize our loss during the Covid-19 pandemic by referring the loss of lives to the vanishment of self-reflection in the mirror. It is created in the background of a year that caught us unprepared. This project encourages people to pause their anxiety and reminds them that the year of 2020 essentially signifies the sudden loss of millions of lives.
 

Mirroring Loss approaches the concept of death in a novel, artistic and timely manner, visualizing over one year of covid death data in a one-minute self-reflective and meditative experience. It aims to challenge the problematic prejudices and their dominance on mentality during the ongoing global crisis: contagious disease, shutdown of schools and shops, people losing jobs, etc. We are sometimes buried in such chaos, the distress and anger, while forgetting that the year 2020 signifies the sudden loss of lives, those who could have more time. Mirroring Loss is designed to help its users pause their anxious thoughts and contextualize loss, to reclaim empathy for one another.To create such an experience, Mirroring Loss primarily constructs theoretical frameworks to touch on people’s psychological movements, and secondly utilizes digital media technologies to create an aesthetic, interactive process. Firstly, this project redefines the daily activity of looking into a mirror, building upon relevant research that a mirror resembles a tool to connect one’s inner thoughts and lead to a process of exploring the mind. It presents a generative particle art piece visualizing the death toll inside a “mirror”–an interface built with digital screens mimicking an ordinary mirror. The particles will gather according to the user’s body image and create a virtual human figure reflecting in the mirror, representing the human body and life. The figure will gradually get more and more incomplete in an artistic way to represent the loss of lives through the spread of the disease.

Secondly, this project visualizes 17 months of worldwide accumulated death data by 12 sequences, showing the tendencies of loss of lives and turning it into a meditative ritual for farewell. When the user’s body is formed, the process of data visualization will begin. The particles will fall from above and accumulate on the ground in a ratio to death increase, a process to watch one’s self in the mirror dissolve piece by piece. Finally, there are only dead pieces on the ground with the total death data remaining on the screen, corresponding with a soil cemetery display around the digital mirror. In a way, a visual representation of the user will experience death in the project of Mirroring Loss under the larger background of covid-19 pandemic. Its ultimate goal speaks directly to the realization that, everyone is waiting for this crisis to end, and everyone is preparing for a collective moment to honor death, for which some of us have waited too long. In the end, the user will realize: Mirroring Loss does more than mirroring death, it is revealing the loss in ourselves.

portfolio blog

Tags:#death#computervision#interactiveart

A Lonely Bird is a 3D experimental game that explores how game mechanics trigger players’ emotional attachments to NPCs.
 

A lonely bird is a 3D experimental game. It explores how game mechanics can trigger players’ emotional attachments to Non-player characters (NPC), combining with the game narrative. In the game, the player acts as a bird trying to escape the island with the help of a companion.

Emotional attachment is the sense of liking, connection, and closeness that a player feels to NPCs. It can provide ample emotional character experience and willingness for suspension of disbelief, having players more emotionally engaged in games.

I am always fascinated by the emotions between players and NPCs created by narrative. The stories make NPCs more vivid as well as make me more immersive in the game. However, there are many times these emotions are disturbed by game mechanics. Because game mechanics in most games do not consider emotion expressing, they may sometimes have a dissonance with narration. When players experience such conflict, they get a less emotional attachment to NPCs and less sense of immersion. “Ludonarrative Dissonance” has become a common problem in the game industry.

Based on the context, I wrote the research paper exploring whether game mechanics could trigger players’ emotional attachments to NPCs. I found that even though many game theorists suggest that it is hard to balance game narrative and game mechanics, several games achieve that. Inspired by the game Journey and Passage, as well as learning profoundly about emotional attachments, I decided to make a game and explore more potentials of game mechanics to produce emotions.

This project focuses on evoke several common genres of emotions from players, especially “cool and capable” and responsibility. In the game, the player (acting as a bird) will grow trees that will produce eggs. When the egg successfully hatches, the player can get scores. The companion (another bird) will significantly improve the efficiency of the work. Meanwhile, the player needs to take care of the companion. In the end, the player has to choose if the player or the companion can leave the island.

A Reflection on Lookism is an interactive face reading/plastic surgery consultation inspired by gwansang and plastic surgery in South Korea.

In this project, users can visit a simulated plastic surgery clinic website to receive a virtual consultation on how they can improve their fortune. After users select an option of what aspect of fortune they would like to improve, I advise them on how they can manipulate their facial features to improve the respective fortune, based on principles of gwansang. I use real-time face-recognition software to recognize the user’s facial features. Once they manipulate their face accordingly, a before and after image of their face is automatically taken from their webcam.

The consultation itself is held virtually in a tent meant to replicate the tents of many fortune telling stalls in Korea. I modified several elements of the tent to create a more “high-end” feel that a plastic surgery clinic would have. The mix of these two atmospheres is meant to evoke the separate feelings of mystery, intimidation, and confusion one feels when they enter a fortune telling stall or medical clinic.

This project was based on the themes of gwansang, lookism, and plastic surgery in South Korea. Gwansang is the Korean practice of face fortune telling, while lookism is appearance-based discrimination. Despite being separate topics, the three phenomena are indirectly interconnected. Lookism is especially prevalent in Korea’s corporate sphere, and people often feel pressured to fit into specific beauty standards to secure ideal jobs. As a result, many people resort to plastic surgery to fulfill these standards. Simultaneously, Korean face fortune tellers are finding their jobs increasingly difficult because of the growing number of people altering their faces. These fortune tellers feel that they cannot give authentic readings, since people’s natural faces have been changed.

A Reflection on Lookism’s purpose is not only to educate others on gwansang and plastic surgery in South Korea, but also to have people reflect on how appearances have influenced our lives and the overall implications lookism has had on society.

Out of Inner Chamber is a pop-up book that combats China’s societal norms on women’s choices. The book allows audience to make choices for the protagonist and walk through a non-linear story experience by interacting with paper mechanisms.
 

Gender issue in Chinese society has been pervasive throughout history. Nowadays, gender stereotypes can be seen in all life aspects, from career choices to family roles, it largely hinders women’s freedom on life choices. Under this context, the pop-up book Out of Inner Chamber focuses on a key theme many young Chinese women face: parental control. Parents’ opinions are mainly shaped by the societal-wide stereotypes. ACWF (All-China Women’s Federation 中华全国妇女联合会) coined the term “leftover women” (剩女), which means single women above the “proper” marriage age. This label not only reinforces the idea that a woman’s value is no more than being a “good wife and wise mother,” but also causes anxiety in parents on girls making independent choices. Thus, parents tend to pressure their daughter into fitting social expectations and take full control of their daughters’ decision making. This projects combats the negative connotation that is associated with women who have the courage to break social norms and make decisions independently. It also aims to encourage young Chinese women to make their own decisions by following their true desires regardless of social norms and external judgements. Ultimately, the project would contribute to the formation of a more tolerant society towards women.

As a pop-up book, Out of Inner Chamber tackles this problem through an interactive non-linear storytelling approach. When the audience unfolds the first spread, a starting point is shown where the protagonist is admitted to a university and is struggling with her choice of major. Two options are provided and the audience can choose either one by unfolding through either direction. After the first decision is made, another problem appears, and the audience can keep choosing from two options. The story will separate into four different endings, all of which are happy endings, however the end states of the protagonist are very different from each other. As people may define happiness differently, the book does not favor any particular choices or judge any decision the audience made. At the end of each story branch, a mirror is provided for the audience to reflect on themselves. The mirrors metaphorically express the idea that anyone may be the protagonist and face the problems the protagonist faced.
This form of interaction fills the blank space between “choose your own adventure” books and traditional linear storytelling pop-up books. In addition to the essence of a book, it contains both physical interactive elements and non-linear story experience. The playful medium softens the shock of the sensitive topic and makes the central argument easier to take in. As the audience unfold the book, they also unfold the life of the protagonist. They are given the ability to choose freely unlike in real world. By using interaction to explore numerous possibilities, young women will feel empowered to look at a future outside of their parents’ or society’s desires. The intimacy embedded in the physical interaction connects the audience with the protagonist’s sufferings. In this way, the idea of the projects is conveyed subtlety.

The book utilizes affordable “2D materials” to create a “3D experience” in order to achieve an effect commonly performed in digital ways, which largely increases the accessibility and physical interactivity. The use of traditional materials challenges social obsession with digital approaches in art making. The project bridges digital design with traditional handicrafts, adding paper engineering to aesthetic design. This is an inspiring direction with large potentials for future projects to develop. At the same time, this project shatters people’s stereotype on pop-up books as “only for children” and without much value. The serious content and realistic stories ask people to re-evaluate this art form and do further study on both the medium and the content.

Video (.mov)
Final Presentation

Tags:#Pop-upBook#ChinaGenderRoles#PaperEngineering

Mirror 1-3 is a set of collage installations. The three “mirrors” invite the audience to explore their identities between virtuality and reality, between the visible and the invisible, by presenting the reflection of the viewer’s self in different forms of media.
 

Mirror 1-3 is a set of collage installations. The three “mirrors” invite the audience to explore their identities between virtuality and reality, between the visible and the invisible, by presenting the reflection of the viewer’s self in different forms of media.

The three mirrors form an experience for the audience to walk through. Once the audience comes to the project, they will first be introduced to Mirror1, a face size mirror with three pieces, each reflecting a part of a person’s face in a different form: video, reflection from a real mirror, and digitally generated moving image. Then they will enter a small room and see Mirror2, a room-size installation. The audience will see mirror fragments hanging from the ceiling as well as real-time video feedback and digitally generated moving image that imitates the shape of the mirror fragments projected on the wall behind, in which the audience see themselves walking around, upside down, pixelated, or stretched. When they leave the room, they will see Mirror3 at the exit – an empty mirror frame.

On the heart of the project lie two questions. The first question is: Who are we in our contemporary life? On the one hand, we are now living in an age of booming media, an era of “fragmentation”. We are pieces of media in different forms that we release on different platforms. On the other hand, people themselves have become more “fragmented”. The soaring development of technology and globalization has driven more and more people into multi-cultural experience and multiple careers. Our time and selves are split into different pieces. We behave differently in different contexts. Inspired by David Hockney’s collage portrait photography, Mirror 1-3 further develop the concept of collage into the form of installation, and use it as a means to discuss the concept of “fragmentation” with the audience.

The second question is: Are the self-images we see true? Many scholars have addressed that in multi-cultural experience and even beyond, people might not look like what they are, but yet constantly experience stereotyping because of their appearance. Sometimes we don’t like our self-images. Sometimes we choose to represent ourselves in a way that we not really are. Sometimes our self-images are imposed. While Mirror1 & 2 provide the audience with a space to view their self-images in different ways, Mirror3 leaves them a blank and puts forward the question: Is the truth merely what we see? To what extent is what we see true?
The project combines technologies such as real-time image capturing, face detection, video manipulation, and projection mapping. The physical installation involves both laser cutting and handcraft, and also takes advantages of special materials such as one-way mirror and rear projection film. However above all, Mirror1-3 is a project that utilizes technology only to serve for its artistic and philosophical purposes. It pushes the “interactivity” and “artificiality” of interactive art into an invisible state by letting people interact with their images in the most natural way. It is an attempt to make interactive art something more than entertaining or eye-catching – To discuss a social phenomenon, to post a complex question, and to convey a message to the audience, to enable the audience to feel and think.