ONE — Rui An

ABOUT

ONE is my thesis project at ITP. It is a collection of digital kinetic sculptures I made to explore the possibility of an alternative mode of expression other than written language.

According to Ferdinand de Saussure, there is no intrinsic relationship between the signifier, the written words and sounds, and signified, the emotions, intentions, things we are actually trying to say. In other words, the link that connects those two is arbitrary. This arbitrariness reminds us that there is a gap, a void between the signifier and the signified and I believe it is through this gap that our more complicated emotions, feelings and definitions get flattened.

The digital sculptures I made in ONE are my attempts to bridge this gap. By creating signifiers with forms and motions that bears emotional qualities and story arcs to the actual signified that makes sense, I created three dimensional symbols that I hope can convey more complicated subtle, feelings and meanings, through experience.

The COVID-19 pandemic happened during the time when I was making this project. Quarantined at home, I felt an immense sense of detachment and self doubt as I felt the symbols and sculptures I created before lack connections to the real world. I don’t feel any motivated. it just seems what I was doing for my thesis deviates from what I care, what occupied my mind all the time which is COVID-19. So I decided to step away form my thesis and worked with Huiyi and JiaBao, and created QingMing. Since every one is trapped in the room, we created QingMing as an online memorial for people to pay tribute to the dead. Each person who visits the website will leave a trail. All the trails together, they form an online monument for the dead, a symbol of remembering and resilience.

After this project, I realized, my thesis is about creating symbols to express, so why not use the symbols i created in ONE to describe, document all those complicated feelings and experiences I have that may other wise to difficult to describe in language. and The trails people left in the monument made me realize that the connection I was looking for with the real world for my symbols lies in Data that bridges the real world the the virtual. For that I created three more digital sculptures.

THEY ARE JUST A NUMBER NOW

Upon till now, 434050 (Jun 14 2020) people are dead because of Corona virus. After WuHan locked down, It almost became of habit of mine, to check the most recent data of COVID-19 every morning. But I must confess, after a certain time. I lost the sense of what those numbers actually mean. It almost feels like, a lot of things were abstracted away and what is left is only that number:

434050

So I created a dynamic sculpture that changes shapes with the most recent death data, to try to make sense of the magnitude of that number while reconciling with the fact that every one of that number was once a living human being.

I want to see the world in my mom’s eyes, but I can’t

Quarantined at home, reading news became the most important way for me to know what is going on outside of my apartment. Most of the times, the news I read make me angry, helpless, strongly emotional. Those news directly renders the mood of my day, and they strongly effect how I see the world.

My mom in China, is doing the same thing. Beside facetime and chat with me on WeChat, the only way my mom can know what is going on in New York is reading the news from China. Most of the news she read contain the correct data. But the data in those news are merely tool for an overall rhetoric of panic, desperation, dooms day vibe. They made my mom super worried, and it almost feel like the New York the news was describing was different from the one I was living in.

I WANT TO SEE IN MY MOM’S EYES, BUT I CAN’T is the sculpture to document this phenomena. I grabbed news I read and news my mom read as data to create this sculpture. The cubes behind those eyes contain up to date news I scraped. Audience can click on those cubes and they will be directed to the news page those cubes contain.

APART, TOgether

During this crisis, we are separated from our friends, even from our loved ones. The bonds that we have with each other, however grow only stronger. In Chinese culture, a full moon is a symbol of togetherness and different phases of the moon is a symbol of the impermanence, the constant changes in our lives.

But no matter which phase we are in, a full moon is always gonna come, and the hope is always gonna be there.

I used some of the messages my friends sent to or received from their family or friends during this time, and used them to create this moon-like sculpture.

development

To manipulate with large amount of data and maintain an overall aesthetic, I used compute and fragment shaders to generate all the visuals in real time inside Unity.

acknowledgement

Music in APART TOGETHER is Sad Sea by Chihei Hatakeyama from his album Mirage

Special thanks to Huiyi Chen for editing.