Echo-Space
Where Music Meets Art,
Shaping the Future
Echo-space is a stage performance design utilizing AIGC video generation and new media audiovisual techniques. We use projections and gauze screens to showcase AIGC-created visuals and integrate traditional classical music, enhancing the visual and tangible aspects of traditional stage performances.
Pursuit of Memory
We use multiple veils to freely combine into a three-dimensional space and display various visual effects with projections.
Our objective is to convey our perception of classical music by means of diverse perspectives and narrative techniques. Through the visualization of music, we inspire the public to engage with and comprehend classical music and experience the cadence of notes dancing through space and time. What we do
Bizarre and ThunderClap in the Ears
Shatte-red
Mirror
Glisten-ing Milky Way
Heavenly Star Glow
We have two implementation plans. The first involves creating a threedimensional space enclosed by four sheer curtains. The second is to design a unique narrative space tailored to the characteristics of the local venue.
We have divided the stage preparation into three parts:
Conduct background research on the venue and music selection to select appropriate elements for creation, ensuring a cohesive theme between music and visuals.
On-site construction
Produce pre-visual effects using software like TouchDesigner, Blender, Unity, and Unreal to create diverse visual content for the concert.
Choose a pre-packaged toolkit for on-site construction, either quadripartite continuous or random arrangement, to create a suitable spatial narrative for the performance venue. We use the curtain as a medium for the production of live installations
Real-time Performa nce Using TD’s Music panel Using Sensors Video Generat ion We use Touchdesig ner & Unity & Unreal to generate our video source
Real-time Interact ion
Backgro und Research
Style Design
We have customized a unique look for each classical music style y we do it
Due to the special cultural atmosphere in China, which has led to the loss of domestic classical music musicians and audiences, we hope to use new media to bring more people into classical music.
&
Due to China s unique music education system, students lack interdisciplinar y collaboration and diverse cultural perspectives, resulting in weak innovation. The focus on technique over the humanistic essence of music has become a recogni
ed image of Chinese music students globally.
Due to the lack of an artistic and cultural atmosphere, coupled with the impact of the internet wave, people s hearts in China have become increasingly restless. Few can step into a concert hall and calmly listen to hours of classical music.
Due to China s unique music education system, students lack interdisciplinary collaboration and diverse perspectives,culturalresulting in weak innovation. The focus on technique over the humanistic eA performer who does not understand music can only teach students playing techniques rather than instilling an interest in music.
Chinese music education is primarily tied to the vanity of admissionsschool and grade certificates. Years of practicing the same few pieces purely for practical purposes drain the child s passion for music, making it impossible to realize the more valuable and impactful educationalhumanistic significance. The distorted music education system has caused the development of the classical music market to appear disconnected from overall societal progress. Artists are left to rely on government funding and the support of parents with young piano students. Unfortunately, profit-driven consumers are always short-term. Chinese classical music needs more genuine enthusiasts and long-term value customers.
Digital Cell
Interaction Video / Immersive Space / Live Action
The work explores the order and unity beyond between and in the digital age.
data living organismscomplex non-living systems
data cave cellular automata facial data global real-time environmental data
Inspired by Plato's allegory of the cave, I constructed a through an immersive space of projection. By cultivating three groups of human microorganisms influenced by different environmental factors and according to their forms, I wrote three sets of new rules using compute shaders and C# scripts in Unity. The generation of these cells originates from the of the audience and . They play different roles and exist and continuously evolve in the virtual environment.
Video Link: https://youtu.be/29PGOpPF7oM?si=ScDuP9YRsG6xzw3s
Large Amounts of Personal Data Lost
These 700G of data include all my projects from the , including irretrievable games, models, designs, videos I edited, photos I took, various personal information, etc. past three years
Plato s Allegor y of The Cave
So when this data was cleared, it felt like a big part of my was also erased. This strong sense of emptiness made me think: existence
The are for the prisoners because they have never seen anything else; they do not realize that what they see are shadows of objects in front of a fire shadowsreality
In many scenarios, due to certain reality limitations, we can only perceive certain aspects of the facts, just like the prisoners in Plato's story, who mistook the images they could perceive on the cave walls () for the real world (). two-dimensional world three-dimensional world
World
The clearest, the least obscure, and the closest depiction of or TruthReality
Lower forms of knowledge which deal directly with of the visible world objects Lesser knowledge which is arrived at by the faculty of understanding Knowledge deals with not things in and of themselves but their or shapesimages
Mind
The current data survival scenario in which people live is also being constructed into a survival cave surrounded by , or it can be directly called a data cave, which is a microcosm of contemporary people and society. data
Everything is recorded in data, thus creating a data-based social context, thereby constructing a communication ecosystem that relies on communication data to survive.
C onclusion
In an era when most personal information is stored in digital form, what does it mean for an individual to exist between the real and the virtual?
In a data-driven world, image data represents the visible world. real things count in some sense instead as the Intelligible world.
How to balance convenience and privacy, how to prevent being manipulated by data, and how to see through the shadow of data to see the essence of things. Shadows (virtual)
Summarize
Plato's T houghts on the Nature of the World
Visual Style Research Cellular Automata： Game of Life
The shape is more realistic and the colors are dark
Revealing the fundamental order of the universe in the of and simplestshapes colors
Heuristic
tri e for the in the content of the representation essential Re ining and simpli ying: and abstra t geometries basic colors
Combined with each other, they form . yellow cyan magenta In computer graphics, a pixel is the of an image and each pixel contains colour information, usually represented by an value. smallest unit R G B
So for the visual design I will be focusing on using these and six colourspixel styles
Biological Experiments
The morphology through the game of life reminded me of , perhaps I could observe the morphology by trying to cultivate colonies and formulate rules for metacellular automata similar to the morphology of colonies colony reproduction
By controlling these three variables, three groups of colonies were grown that were differentially influenced by these factors
Observation and Modelling
Morphological Simulation
History dependent cellular automata
Index totalistic cellular automata
ing
Compute Shader
Handles a large number of mapping calculation tasks by using a . compute sha er
Generate different forms of metacellular automata depending on the range of cells in the computational , and the number of determinations . neighbou hood
Managing all compute shaders using . C# scrip s
Sett ng s mple rules to make d fferent k nds of metacellular automata and each other . devour reproduce
Multiple neighborhoods cellular automata
Project Programme
Portrait Input
Set the camera capture to the initial texture based on bisection brightness
Experience Flow
In this immersive experience, viewers will upload their own to a large screen, where each pixel block of portrait data will operate according to the rules of a
Weather Data Input
the , I can dynamically get the weather around the world. openweather API
As more and more people upload, an ecosystem of individual-to-individual data will gradually be formed.
hen the individual data reaches a certain level, weather data will be accessed in real time, and different kinds of will affect the generation of metacellular automata with different rules.
The audience can see how connects to the .
automaton individual data weather data complex system of the group
Future Plans
In the future, I plan to integrate artificial intelligence algorithms into this project.
This may involve using machine learning to analyze and predict the behavior of cells generated from facial and environmental data. By training an artificial intelligence model on large datasets, we may be able to discover new patterns and relationships between living organisms and non-living systems in the digital age.
In addition, artificial intelligence can also help optimize the rules of cellular automata.
The Truth of Worship
Interactive installation / digital video
postmodern societysymbols reality worshiptraditional entitiesmodern virtual imagescapital electronic worship ritual data
In , the relationship between and is increasingly blurred. Surreal symbols begin to generate themselves and no longer refer to reality.
People's has shifted from to . Behind this is that uses commodity fetishism and algorithms to establish a society full of daydreams and realizes the invisible plundering of people. In the project, I created a brandnew . I collected comments and data about worship wishes on social media through web crawlers and used TouchDesigner to present these data in the form of a 3D matrix to help people clearly "see" the role of in shaping people's worship objects and behaviors.
Video Link: https://youtu.be/dZfhvsUp2Iw?si=0JCdHf0rlpC-AJHQ
About My family’s traditions
Worship
Serve food
The Zhongyuan Festival Ghost Festival , also known as the , is a traditional Chinese festival.
People believe that during this time, the gates of the underworld are opened and the spirits of the can return to the world . deceased
My mother will lead our whole family to set the table, arrange candles, tableware, drinks and meals, and invite our deceased relatives to have a meal to worship them.
It should be noted that the number of dishes is preferably as these are . In particular, avoid four (which is ). six or eight auspicious numbers homophonous with "death" in Chinese
Burn paper
After dinner, we went to the balcony to . People believe that the paper money burned in the real world will be sent to relatives in the other world. burn paper money When burning paper, it must be , otherwise the coins sent to the netherworld are burnt thoroughly incomplete.
My Thoughts
All of the above behaviors can be attributed to the manifestation of . ancestor worship psychology
Regarding these worship rituals, on the one hand, I can understand the they express. On the other hand, the various also arouse my research interest. blessings and wishes taboos of the rituals
Why hasn’t it disappeared yet?
Bibliography Interview
Bei jing
Reasons for Prayinh
Praying can bring me a and make me feel that I am not facing the psychological sustenance uncertainty of the future alone.
1. The revival of folk witchcraft beliefs has complex reasons. is one factor. Its core value stance is . And witchcraft is also utilitarian. In Malinowski's words, "Witchcraft is " Its practicality coincides with the utilitarian nature of consumer culture. Consumer culture utilitarian values a means to achieve certain ends.
2. The is also a . In this context, witchcraft, as a cultural means and psychological technique for our ancestors to deal with unpredictable risks, still has its value. Regardless of its actual effect, it does provide a means for people to after all. consumer societyrisk society deal with modern risks
uestionnaire Zhu Shuang. Ritual Symbol and Symbol Worship [D]. Nanjing Normal University, 2020. DOI: 10.27245/d.cnki.gnjsu.2020.000890.
Because of anxiety. forwarding rate Unsolicited Sacrifices
Causes of anxiety
adsshow-offs
Seeing and others' makes me feel pressured. I worry about not being able to keep up and fit into the successful circle.
Network blessing symbol
Those koi fish and Buddha pictures on the Internet are like a . Forwarding them makes one feel that perhaps they will bring psychological hint good luck to oneself.
Aspire to the luck of the draw like the rest of the internet.
Name-brand plot
Seeing others praying for success makes me think that this blogger is even more efficacious.
or people, the main focus of commodity consumption is no longer its use value, but the meaning pointed to by it as a symbol or sign. nclusions
Pragmatism style is originally a characteristic of Chinese people's beliefs, filled with people's various practical visions and speculative mentality of longing for gains without pains.
Witchcraft as a cultural commodity is combined into the commodity symbol system of consumer culture and separated from its historical connotations.
Today's people's psychology
. Advertising rituals endow items with symbolic meanings, and items exist as symbols. People by . electronic witchcraft advertising rituals obtain satisfactionconsuming these symbols
Whether it is forwarding koi to accumulate good fortune, electronic wooden fish, or burning incense online, the logic behind these “varied” forms of is actually always the same. What we care about is not the behavior itself. It is just a time-honored Internet superstition symbol worship. The illusory belief in “” belongs to the concept of symbol worship under
The capital control behind Project proposals
The behind “electronic witchcraft” controlling powercannot be casually influenced by the general public.
The felt by the audience is also a myth of incredible luck carefully to make them feel it. divine power designed by the capital
Part of the audience's of the world also comes from the messages that wants the audience to be exposed to.
Viewpoint
Set up a completely process through installations and projections.
new worship interaction
The overall composition of the installation refers to the . form of Chinese sacrificial altars
The projected image is used to show the changes in people's objects of worship
The that people use to for blessings as Prayer beads interactive prop
Refer to the merit box for in temples. donating money
Interaction process
1 2 3
Today's worship rituals are more easily accepted by people in . In fact, behind it is the . Capital uses the miracle of "common people getting rich overnight" and the to enhance the effectiveness of witchcraft and deceive modern people.
It uses the witchcraft means of to build a society full of and longing for miracles, so as to achieve of people. electronic form manipulation of capital information filtering mechanism symbol fetishism daydreams and fantasies invisible plundering
Drop coins into the merit box and make a wish
Generate according to wish and project it onto prayer beads. symbolic totem The on the beads will according to the light. special dye generate patterns
4
After picking up the prayer beads, one can with the projected image to understand the control behind it. interact truth of data
This ink can switch from transparent to colored when exposed to light of a certain wavelength
Photo-Chromeleon: Re-Programmable Multi-Color Textures Using Photochromic Dyes In Proceedings of UIST 2019.
Control the projected image according to the rotation direction and touch of the prayer beads
Specific totems are converted into words of wishes
The crawled data is transmitted to TD for 3D display
Acceleration data is transmitted to TD through the Bluetooth module
Crawlers crawl social media data
Determine the rotation direction through acceleration
Outcome
Improvements
For future improvements to this project, I could expand the to include more diverse platforms and communities. This would provide a broader range of perspectives on worship.
Additionally, I could explore more to make the 3D matrix even more engaging and informative.
data collection sources advanced visualization techniques psychologicalsociological factors
Another area for improvement could be to conduct in-depth research on the and behind the shift in worship and integrate these findings into the project to provide a more comprehensive understanding.
the third space XU
video installation digital video
According to the traditional , human emotions and feelings correspond to the five elements.
Chinese five-element theory third space
Through modeling and Unity's VFX particle system, I create a between complete illusion and reality. The entire space is designed to let people let go of their attachments to reality and virtuality, face everything from the perspective of "the universe is impermanent, everything is impermanent and illusory", and free themselves from the bondage of emotions and materials.
Video Link: https://youtu.be/oCu2MmK6jZ8?si=IFvD8R5MHbq2BkU2
Moving Image
inspiration
“Empty speculations can carry any dreamland, while solid answers will confine real pain.”
——Notes On “Virtuality”
“The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none.
The simulacrum is true.”
——Simulacra and Simulations
“When false is taken for true, true becomes false; when nothing is taken for something, something becomes nothing.”
——A Dream of Red Mansions
About Virtuality
Different literary works have diverse attitudes towards reality and virtuality.Shi Tiesheng's work shows a . Baudrillard's simulacrum presents a paradox. In "A Dream of Red Mansions," the couplet suggest the virtual is a
I am intrigued by the distinctions in attitudes and eager to explore how different authors approach this complex relationship. contrast manifestation of reasonable possibilities.
Jean Baudrillard is of virtual reality. He believes that are products of the post-industrial era, consumer society, and media development. It is the withdrawal of history, where and replace reality. This is a warning of the potential hazards of the digital age. critical simulacra symbolsimages
I have created a between complete illusion and reality based on the Illusory L and of G reat Void described in "A D ream of R ed M ansions ".
The entire space aims to let people with reality and virtuality and face everything from the perspective of the universe is unpredictable and all is impermanent and illusory , and be from the constraints of emotions, materials. virtual dream space let go of their obsession liberated
D rea m of th e R ed Ch a mb er
However, if viewed dialectically. In C hinese philosophy, for e x ample, in the literary wor k , e x istence interprets the relationship between devirtualization and reality from another perspective. The virtual world called the G rand V iew G arden in the wor k represents a of and . It shows that the virtual is not j ust an illusion, but can contain deep meaning and value.
design
The design of the refers to the descriptions in the original work： main space
"It is located above the Heaven of Separation from Sorrow and among the Sea of Melancholy."
"With vermilion railings, white stones, green trees and clear brooks, it is truly a place rarely visited by people and untouched by dust."
Chinese traditional architecturesmemorial archwaysTaihu stones
I have added , and some dynamically flowing to increase the dreamy feeling of the scene.
The design of the , I referred to the in ancient China. It echoes the architecture in the screen. I redesigned the combination of column, beam and square components. installationbeam frame structure
Moving Image
My spatial design references the five main in the , namely the : ignorance, attachment, aversion, pride, and envy. These five afflictions correspond to the five viscera and the kleshas(afflictions)Mahayana tradition"five poisons" Wuxing(Five Phases)
Taking the as an example, it corresponds to . The design of the pendulum is derived from Schopenhauer's view that . The Buddha body implies the two-sided nature of human beings and emphasizes the importance of personal choice in the face of desires. fire scene human desires life is constantly swinging between pain and boredom
Video Installation outcome
My work is a . Consisting of a steel frame structure and screens, it references the ancient Chinese beam structure. video installation
carrier of the Taixu illusion in real space extension
The screen serves as the , and different positions of the screen correspond to different orientations in the illusion. The steel frame serves as an of the illusionary realm in reality, and at the same time communicates with the various virtual scenes.
Video Installation
Sound of Flowing
Experience Design Interactive Installation
With the progress of urbanization, the river at my doorstep has been involved in the continuous changes of the small town. It was once a part of life in the small town but has gradually been forgotten by people. From an ordinary river, it has turned into a stinky ditch. Now it is slowly recovering.
Therefore, I have designed an interactive installation. In the context of the , I hope to arouse people's awareness of maintaining the between man-made objects and natural objects from a perspective. Anthropocenedynamic balance non-anthropocentric
Vedio Link:
https://youtu.be/r45z-T_L_S8?si=C16EXHo6DvsKIb67
Man-made objects urbanisation play an important role in encroaching on the natural environment .As population increases and accelerates, human activity continues to alter the natural environment, causing many environmental problems.
Wherever and whenever possible, humans are the natural environment. influencing and modifying
Research ideation
We asked of different ages and occupations to fill out a two 10 people questionnaires
Questionnaire 1 Ratings
The two questionnaires asked questions from and perspectives respectively cognitivepractical
The higher the rating, the more pronounced the anthropocentric tendencies
The questionnaire lists a series of questions that rate people's anthropocentric tendencies
similar scores report A report B
I grouped 2 people with and gave one person a and the other a . After they read the report, ask them to do a second questionnaire.
Questionnaire 2 Ratings
change
Report A human animalplant health is about the impact of environmental problems on , and . Report B economy consumed mainly highlights the to solve environmental problems.
Between citizens Business, Government
Material exchange Imbalance Nature
Education level
Different Growing background
Location
Difference Between Theory and Practice Influenced by the Reports
There is of environmental ethical responsibility in , but
in practical choices.
Especially in the (mine development, development of large commercial centres, etc.) exploitation of the natural environment
similar large differences
Even people with scores on the first questionnaire may have in their scores on the second questionnaire after reading different reports.
for the natural environment than the same group.
anthropocentric tendencies
Information asymmetry Imbalance between cognition and behaviour
Problem Statement
Due to various reasons of, there exists an between humans and nature information asymmetry unbalanced tension
Target Audience
There is an imbalance between the and the of some people in the process of material exchange between humans and nature.
Goal
the process of through design. Restorematerial exchange
Let participants obtain a truly on their own behaviors. percepti
the problem of and let people understand the tense relationship of between humans and nature.
Design Progress
People initiate material exchange
Active interaction with nature through physical behavioural functions
Man-made things completely replace nature Show the impact on different regions
Imbalance between humans and nature
Building Block Ray Projection
Using different materials
The process of humans building various artificial items reflects .
Just like for people's innate nature of construction children's innate love building blocks.
The gradual of the boards in different areas represents the gradual of nature by . flip replacement man-made objects
The complete flowing water is blocked in different places, making the real situation . This symbolizes . unknown information asymmetr y in different regions
The flow represents in nature. It is divided into three sections that abstractly represent the of the river rivers upper, middle and lower
Due to the change of the of the flowing water, the of the bamboo tube will accordingly, implying that nature itself is in a state of gravity direction fluctuate dynamic balance
Due to human building, the water flow will gradually and the bamboo tube will . The no longer exist. dry up stop knockingflowing sounds
Finally, when the building blocks reach a , the will completely the . certain weight Flipping Installation cover Flowing Installation
The light of the building blocks onto the facade behind. The shadow of the city will be shrouded over the silent nature. projects the shadow
Outcome
reflection
The final work was placed next to the , which attracted some in the community to watch.
The installation uses the water of the river pond as the , and the as the medium, so that more people can feel the process of man-made objects replacing natural objects. river pond residents source of powermulti-sensory experience design