HKUST
2026
PORTFOLIO e u y g n e h e xu
BETWEEN HUMAN AND MACHINE
MAKE
Hengyue Xue
THINK IMAGINE
P O R T F O L I O
2026
M A P
Practice→Critique→Creation Physical → Digital → Posthuman
PROJECT 01 STAGING PERCEPTION Designing Human Experience through Space, Light and Performance
Curatorial Question 01 How do humans construct experience?
Human × Machine × Imagination
02 What happens when machines enter the creative process? 03 What might creativity become beyond the human?
My practice moves between making, questioning and imagining. I see machines not simply as tools for producing art, but as collaborators that force us to reconsider creativity, identity and the boundaries of the human.
PROJECT 02
WHO IS CREATING? A Critical Investigation into AIGC and Creative Authorship
PROJECT 03 POSTHUMAN MONSTERS Visualising the Ethical Boundary between Human, Machine and Other MAKE THINK IMAGINE
ARTS AND MACHINE CREATIVITY | HKUST
PROJECT 01
1.1 STAGING PERCEPTION
LIGHT
VISUAL MEDIA
Lighting shapes mood, rhythm and visual hierarchy
LED background creates narrative context and visual atmosphere
How Experience Is Constructed 2025 | Concert Stage Planning | Team Project
Role: Head of Stage Planning & Operations Department
PERFORMANCE
SPACE
Performer movement and musical expression drive the emotional flow
Stage layout and height enhance depth and focus
Performance is not only staged, but spatially, visually and emotionally orchestrated. Through the integration of space, light, visual media, performer movement, sound and audience attention, the stage becomes a system of perception that shapes how people feel, understand and remember.
SOUND
This became the foundation for my later question: if experience can be designed, could it also become adaptive?
The System of Staging Perception
Visual and auditory cues guide audience focus
02
Spatial structure, stage layout,
Perception, emotion, participation
SPACE
focus, visual rhythm
AUDIENCE ATTENTION
LIGHT
Stage planning and operation coordination
stage layout, technical setup and on-site execution 01 Oversee across departments.
Visual media and atmosphere direction
02 Work with the visual team to define LED content, visual tone
HUMAN EXPERIENCE
LED screen, visual content, real-time atmosphere
My Role
Musical structure, rhythm, immersion
SOUND
and stage atmosphere.
Audience attention planning
03 Design stage flow and key visual moments to guide audience focus and emotional rhythm.
PERFORMANCE
Design Logic
performer positioning Atmosphere, mood,
VISUAL MEDIA
AUDIENCE ATTENTION
Live music and ensemble create immersive atmosphere
Coordination between screen, light and performance
Movement, expression, narrative, energy
04 Integrate visual media, lighting and performer movement to create a unified stage experience.
visual focus 01 Build Use light, screen and stage composition to create clear visual hierarchy and key moments.
space and depth 02 Layer Through stage layout, lighting and visual media, construct a spatial experience with depth and rhythm.
rhythm and movement 03 Synchronise Align music, lighting cues, visual transitions and performer movement to form a coherent flow.
emotional memory 04 Shape Combine multiple sensory cues to create a memorable emotional experience for the audience.
02
Project 01
Performing Arts Experience Design
1.2 WHAT IF THE STAGE COULD THINK?
—— From Designed Experience to Adaptive Experience FROM CURRENT STAGE TO ADAPTIVE STAGE
Current Stage Pre-designed content Fixed lighting and visuals One-way presentation Limited real-time interaction
→ Adaptive Stage Real-time sensing Dynamic visual and audio response Two-way audience-stage interaction
ADAPTIVE STAGE SYSTEM (CONCEPTUAL CLOSED LOOP) →
→
Living and evolving experience
→ →
Data
Generative Visual System
AUDIENCE
Camera /Sound /Motion
Emotion Movement Sound
Video input Emotion analysis Real-time AI-driven visuals Audio input data collection Pattern recognition Real-time generation Motion tracking and analysis Meaning extraction Style adaptation Audience (New Emotional Input)
←
Light / Screen/Sound
→
Stage Response
Visual / Audio Dynamic control Atmosphere Multi-modal output Scene transition
→
→
←
AI Interpretation
→
Note: This is a concept proposal derived from the stage practice in Project 01. It explores the possibility of an adaptive stage system, rather than a fully built and tested system.
This speculative stage system became my transition from designing experience to questioning how machines might participate in shaping it.
PROJECT 02
PHYSICAL
→
2026
DIGITAL
2.1 WHO IS CREATING? A Critical Investigation into AIGC and Short-Video Authorship +
2026 | Graduation Thesis Research | Individual Project Research Basis: This project is developed from my undergraduate graduation thesis, A Study of How AIGC Empowers Short-Video Platforms and the Ethical Challenges It Raises. It translates the thesis’s analysis of content
—— AIGC in the Short-Video Ecosystem
01 PRODUCTION
02 DISTRIBUTION
From Creative Assistance to Workflow Integration
Multimodal Understanding and Personalized Distribution
03 COMMERCIALIZATION Virtual Digital Humans and Automated Marketing
Script Generation
Content Understanding
Digital Human Live Streaming
AI Voice Synthesis
User Profiling
AI Customer Service / Marketing
Visual Asset Creation
Recommendation Optimization
Automated Content Supply
Automated Editing
Content Visibility Organization
Commercial Conversion
production, distribution, commercialisation and ethical responsibility into a visual research framework. Key Conclusion: AIGC does not eliminate authorship; it redistributes creative agency among creators, models and platforms, while making responsibility increasingly difficult to locate.
My Research Contribution
01
Built a framework for analysing AIGC in short-video production.
02
Compared human-led and AI-mediated creative paths.
03 04
Identified authorship as distributed among creator, model and platform. Connected platform creativity to authenticity, emotion and responsibility.
AIGC AND SHORT VIDEO
AUTHENTICITY
AUTHORSHIP
EMOTION
04
2.2 Authorship and Rights Where Does Creativity Really Lie? AIGC shifts creation from direct execution to intention, constraint, selection and judgement.
Real cases
Authenticity Crisis TRADITIONAL AUTHORSHIP
AI-MEDIATED AUTHORSHIP
Linear creation path
Collaborative generation path
01 Deepfake and Identity Crisis
THE THRESHOLD OF HUMAN AUTHORSHIP
Creator
Constrain
HUMAN AGENCY
→
Intention
Voice, face and behaviour can be simulated, making personal identity harder to protect.
Prompt
Intention
Selection
→
Iteration
AIGC lowers the threshold for making convincing images. Visual evidence becomes less stable when images no longer depend on real events.
02 Misinformation and Social Trust AI images can become persuasive visual language and intensify truth-confirmation fatigue.
03 Reality and Hyperreality →
Model Generation
( a ) News footage of Ukrainian influencer Olga Loiek explaining how her likeness was recreated using AI and used to promote products online.
When image sources become difficult to trace, reality needs a new definition.
04 Redefinition of Authorship Works may become shared products of human intent and platform systems.
Execution
THREE PARTICIPATING AGENTS
Human
Model
Platform
Creative intention, values and judgement
Content generation and variation
Selection, distribution and commercial infrastructure
Work
Human Selection
05 Challenge of Originality When outputs derive from existing data, originality becomes harder to define.
06 IP and Ethical Boundaries Data
Work
The issues regarding the ownership of training data, style imitation, and generated content still involve legal and ethical controversies.
( b ) Screenshot of a platform creator discussing the controversy over AIgenerated imitation of an original image.
AI-Generated Visualisations As this is a theoretical study, the images in this section are AI-generated illustrations used to visualise the research framework. I was responsible for concept development, prompt writing, output selection, refinement and visual organisation. They are explanatory images, not evidence of conducted experiments.
ARTS AND MACHINE CREATIVITY
PROJECT 03
HKUST
3.1 MONSTER ETHICS IN STRANGER THINGS Research Paper | Individual Project | Role: Ethical Research, Character Analysis, Concept Development, AI-assisted Visualisation
：
Eg This project uses the monster not simply as a creature category, but as a method for examining how boundaries are constructed. Through Stranger Things, I trace how technological experimentation transforms monstrosity from an external biological threat into a question of identity, agency and responsibility.
01 DEMOGORGON — THE EXTERNAL OTHER
02 ELEVEN — THE MANUFACTURED OTHER
03
Body / Otherness / Fear
Experiment / Identity / Institutional Control
Trauma / Agency / Responsibility
The Demogorgon appears as an unknown biological threat. Its radically different form separates the normal from the abnormal, and the human world from the outside. It embodies the classic monster as the external other, against which the boundary of the human is defined.
Eleven is not a conventional monster, vet her body and abilities are shaped through institutional experimentation. She exists between human and machine, revealing how technology produces altered bodies, unstable identities, and new forms of otherness within systems of power.
Vecna destabilises the boundary between person and monster. His powers emerge from human trauma, making monstrosity a question of choice, agency and responsibility rather than appearance alone.He embodies the ethical monster; where the human and the monstrous are deeply entangled.
External Creature
Technologically Produced Other
Ethical Subject
Character images from Stranger Things are used as film-study references for academic analysis. © Netflix.
VECNA — THE ETHICAL MONSTER
ARTS AND MACHINE CREATIVITY
PROJECT 03
3.2
FROM MONSTER TO MACHINE Reading AI Co-Creation through Agency and Responsibility THESIS
If technology can produce the ‘monster’ by destabilising identity, agency and responsibility, AI offers a contemporary form of the same boundary problem: it appears increasingly autonomous, while the human systems behind it become more difficult to see. 01
APPLYING THE MONSTER FRAMEWORK TO AI
01
HKUST
PERCEIVED AUTONOMY The machine appears independent.
02
MANUFACTURED AGENCY Agency is designed, trained and situated.
03
OBSCURED RESPONSIBILITY Agency expands while accountability fragments.
Works circulate across platforms, institutions and public spheres, raising questions of ownership, accountability and long-term impact.
INTENTION Who defines the initial goal and boundary?
04
CIRCULATION Who becomes responsible when the work enters society?
Human goals, values and cultural context shape what is created and how it is framed.
02
HUMAN × MACHINE BOUNDARY-MAKING
GENERATION What emerges beyond human intention?
ETHICAL LOOP
AI generates outputs that may exceed, recombine or diverge from human intention.
03
SELECTION AI-generated results can seem detached from their human creators, producing anxiety about replacement, unpredictability and loss of control.
AI VISUALISATION NOTE
KEY CONCLUSION
AI agency is constructed through training data, model architecture, human decisions and institutional objectives.
When authorship is distributed across creators, models and platforms, responsibility becomes difficult to identify.
： illustrations were developed through a human–machine co-creation loop
Who decides what is meaningful, acceptable or abnormal?
Outputs are evaluated, filtered and framed through human, institutional and cultural standards, which shape what is seen as normal or deviant.
Beyond-human creativity does not mean creativity without humans. It describes a hybrid system in which human intention, machine generation and platform circulation continually reshape one another. What becomes “monstrous” is not machine difference itself, but the disappearance of visible boundaries and accountable responsibility.
PORTFOLIO 2026
ARTS AND MACHINE CREATIVITY
FUTURE PRACTICE
WHY AMC
RESPONSIVE PERFORMANCE
Turning critical research into testable, public-facing systems.
Designing human experience through space, light and interaction.
01 CRITICAL FRAMEWORKS AMC’s critical studies focus would help me connect distributed authorship, authenticity and monster ethics within a coherent framework of agency and responsibility.
Across three projects, my practice moves from designing experience to questioning the systems that produce it. Project 01 treats the stage as a perceptual system shaped by space, light and performance. Project 02 examines how AIGC redistributes authorship across creators, models and platforms. Project 03 uses monster ethics to explore how technology unsettles identity, agency and responsibility. Together, they form a practice that combines experiential design, critical research and speculative visualisation to develop accountable forms of human–machine co-creation.
MAKE
THINK
IMAGINE
EXPAND
HKUST
AI-ASSISTED VISUAL SYSTEMS Exploring authorship and creative agency with AIGC.
HUMAN × MACHINE × IMAGINATION
02 RESPONSIVE SYSTEMS SPECULATIVE WORLD-BUILDING Visualising posthuman futures and ethical boundaries.
Training in programming, generative art and interactive visual systems would help me turn the adaptive-stage proposal into a testable audience-responsive prototype.
03 RESEARCH THROUGH PRACTICE Project-based collaboration would allow me to test these questions through performance and installation, bringing theoretical arguments into direct contact with audiences.
Machine creativity can expand imagination while human judgement, agency and responsibility remain visible.