C.301 Cyberspace Odyssey

Mismatch Between Atomized Society & Tribal Social Instinct, 3D Scan, Motion Capture

2020

This work is based on this global pandemic, focusing on the mismatch between atomized society and tribal social instinct, as well as the inner psychological space of modern society. I try to achieve some kind of cognitive alienation through the virtual reconstruction of modern people's living conditions. The pandemic can be regarded as a metaphor for the accelerating modernity and a feedback of the natural defense mechanism caused by anthropocentrism. Isolation at home magnifies our desire for nature and our animality. It provides us with a new perspective to look back at our primitive body, desire, subconscious, and physiological mechanism.

​

When people are unconsciously surrounded by endless white information flow, LED lights and electromagnetic noise, modern apartment has already replaced nature and become the second nature. We've been in this modern, artificial, automated second nature for so long that we forget we're part of nature. So I 3D scanned my apartment and rebuilt a virtual version of my habitat. In terms of vision, I used two-dimensional lines to describe the second nature, stripping all weight, texture, colour and perception. It represents that our real life and emotions are engulfed by these two-dimensional simulacra. Then I projected my behavior on an ape. She wanders in a mixture space of reality, dream and cyberspace. She is sometimes anxious, sometimes lonely, sometimes angry, like a trapped animal under house arrest in a modern prison.

BGM from Ólafur Arnalds & Nils Frahm  ‘Live in Berlin’