Season 3｜
EMERGING SCI-TECH ARTIST AWARDS
SELECTED WORKS

Since the open call was launched on November 16, 2025, following a three-month process of public submission, project implementation, and jury deliberation, we selected 24 shortlisted works from submissions by emerging artists across China, and ultimately presented them in the form of an exhibition at the UABB

  • Glass Boxing

    HUANG Enqi / WANG Xintong

    Glass Boxing misleads the AI into broadcasting the activities of two goldfish in a glass tank as live commentary on a boxing match. The work borrows from the “Chinese Room” thought experiment: while removing the walls that originally separated language from understanding, it dramatically presents both “language” (the goldfish in the tank) and “the description of language” (the boxing commentary) simultaneously. In a series of conflicts without causes and victories without consequences, the work playfully revisits the question of “whether AI truly possesses understanding,” suggesting that perhaps, for AI, misunderstanding is simply one of the ways to describe the world.

    HUANG Enqi
    A PhD candidate at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and a specially appointed expert at the Beijing City University Artificial Intelligence Art Research Center, investigates the alienation of daily life through interactive video, mechanical installations, and bio-art. His recent research and practice focus on differential narratives within AI-generated art, exploring how technology redefines perception and experience. Huang’s works have been exhibited and awarded in national exhibitions, and his critical writings have been published in core art journals.

    WANG Xintong
    A Beijing-based new media artist working primarily with video installations, projection, and virtual reality. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Digital Media Art from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, followed by a Master’s degree from Parsons School of Design. She is currently a PhD candidate in Contemporary Art Creation and Research at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Her practice stems from personal curiosity and social observation, employing technology to visually articulate both lived experience and imagined possibilities.

  • Black Box · Latent Theatre

    vrch.io

    Black Box · Latent Theatre juxtaposes the variable performance space of a black box theater with the opaque nature of an AI model. Audience members are captured by a panoramic camera and projected into the model’s latent space, where their images are algorithmically transformed into panoramic stage visuals through diffusion-based rendering. These visuals then recursively emerge through projections and mirrors. Reality ceases to be a fixed foundation, becoming instead a continuous feedback loop of AI-driven reimagination. The work extends the team’s ongoing exploration of “liquid architecture” and the “quality without a name,” advancing from architecture and the body toward a live, co-creative interplay among humans, generative AI, and space.

    vrch.io
    An interdisciplinary research and development team composed of experimental architects, computational artists, and AI engineers, dedicated to applying generative artificial intelligence to create digitally intelligent spatial experiences that actively adapt to human activity.

  • Latent Panopticon

    CHEN Zijian

    Latent Panopticon is an installation artwork exploring gaze and AI-generation. Viewers use the device to observe and capture urban landscapes of Shenzhen. The selected scenes are then parsed and reconstructed by artificial intelligence, generating new visual outcomes that are projected back into the space. In this process, the act of gazing becomes a trigger for creation — to look is to rewrite reality. The work points toward an “alternative reality” continuously overlaid and regenerated by algorithms, provoking reflection on contemporary visual experience and authenticity.

    CHEN Zijian
    Born in 2000 in Zhejiang, China, is an artist who holds both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree from the China Academy of Art. His work delves into the liminal spaces between the virtual and the real, employing interactive video and mechanical installations to construct speculative environments. Informed by the philosophy of technology, his practice contemplates the evolving relationships between humanity, nature, and media. Chen’s works have been exhibited at prominent institutions such as the China Art Museum, the Power Station of Art in Shanghai, 798CUBE, and the Times Art Museum Beijing.

  • Dream of Robots

    LIU Jiayu / LI Hang / REN Qingqi

    Dream of Robots is an AI-driven multimedia installation that combines real-time generated visuals with robotic performance. When a viewer enters the space, a humanoid robot observes and captures features such as the viewer’s face, clothing, and posture. It then enters a “sleep” state, transforming this real-world data into input for generative imagery, constructing a continuously flowing “dreamscape” in real time. Using visual diffusion of particles, the generated imagery simulates the process from noise to image formation, exploring how artificial intelligence perceives, internalizes, and reconstructs real-world experiences. Moving beyond the question of how intelligence “thinks,” this work seeks to establish profound resonance and metaphorical dialogue between humans and machines on the level of spirit and thought.

    LIU Jiayu
    PhD researcher in Art and Technology. Since 2018, he has earned a bachelor’s degree in Digital Media Art and a master’s degree in Robotic Art and Design, and began pursuing a PhD in Art and Technology in 2024. He has long been engaged in interdisciplinary research and creative practice at the intersection of art, culture, and intelligent technology, developing artworks with lifelike qualities through artificial intelligence, digital generation, and robotic technologies. Liu has participated in the multimedia stage and visual design of a number of major digital cultural projects, including the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics, the China Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka, the China Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai, and the CCTV Year of the Rabbit Spring Festival Gala. His works have been exhibited at the First China Digital Art Exhibition, the Asian Digital Art Exhibition, and Beijing Design Week, among others.

    LI Hang
    Young artist. He received his bachelor’s degree in Digital Media Art from the School of Design at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and his master’s degree in Art and Technology from the same school. He currently works at the Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence. His long-term practice focuses on academic research and artistic creation across the intersecting fields of artificial intelligence, robotics, and new media art.

    REN Qingqi
    New media artist. He graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts with a focus on Media Art, and previously served as a research assistant in the Robotics, Technology, and Art Research program at the academy. His practice centers on the intersection of art and technology, using programming and related techniques to create works spanning interactive moving-image installations, 3D digital art, and audiovisual performance. His works have been exhibited at the Beijing Art and Technology Biennale, the China Xinjiang International Art Biennale, and the National Art Exhibition, among others, and have received multiple awards, including the Gold Award at the Shenzhen Light and Shadow Art Season.

  • Vajra

    YE Xuecan

    Using images of rare organisms, architecture, and medical equipment as source material, the artist employs open-source artificial intelligence (AI) models to merge their formal characteristics and train a customised generative system that produces new hybrid forms. These images are then converted into three-dimensional models and further refined through the artist’s manual sculpting and redesign, adding structure, joints, and detail to the figures. The final works are produced using 3D printing, retaining the natural colour and sheen of PLA, a material commonly used in engineering and maker culture, to highlight its distinctive material qualities.

    YE Xuecan
    Artist. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Tsinghua University in 2017, and later completed her Master of Fine Arts at Parsons School of Design, New York in 2020. Her practice spans painting, installation, writing, performance, and moving image, through which she constructs speculative systems of science fiction to explore the contradictory and uncanny entanglements between technology and the body. Ye emphasizes intuitive bodily experience and the sustained presence of handcraft in her work, while actively employing algorithmic modeling, AI training, CNC fabrication, and other technologies as creative “prostheses.”

  • Fusion Intelligence

    FOG Base Station

    Fusion Intelligence is an immersive simulation experience inspired by the core principles of the EAST “artificial sun” fusion device. Through bodily movement, visitors directly influence a virtual fusion reaction, collecting hydrogen fuel particles within a circular experimental field and simulating the full process from ignition to the maintenance of high-temperature plasma. As energy reaches a critical threshold, the system—drawing on real experimental data—visualises the transformation of plasma from turbulence to stable confinement at temperatures of 100 million degrees. Using an intuitive visual language, the work presents the emergence of future clean energy under extreme conditions. It is both an artistic reconstruction of the “artificial sun” ignition process and a visual demonstration of how future energy systems seek ordered solutions within non-linear and complex environments.

    FOG Base Station

     

  • The Backroom to Lingjing

    CHEN Pengfan / KAN Zihan / QIAN Keyi / WANG Ji

    The Backroom to Lingjing is a video-essay series based on comparative research. Drawing on Qian Xuesen’s technological thought in the latter half of the twentieth century as an archaeological thread, the work examines technologies such as the Chunlian Machine, conversational agents (including Grok and ChatGPT), and virtual reality as diverse forms of simulation and extension of human practice. Through these cases, the project reconsiders the logics of control, as well as the conditions of atomisation and datafication that characterise contemporary technological society. It also raises a central question: how might we arrive at a future in which humans and technology coexist more harmoniously? By tracing the evolution of AI and its converging technological pathways, the work further reflects on the trajectories of technological change and the forms of connection that may emerge in the future.

    CHEN Pengfan
    His practice spans generative art, video games, and other media. His works combine a deep understanding of technological aesthetics with a critical perspective on technology.

    KAN Zihan
    Working across 3D animation, video games, and AI, she examines how technology shapes the relationship between the individual and society.

    WANG Ji
    Using virtual technologies and related media, she explores the possible reconfiguration of perceptual mechanisms and social structures.

    QIAN Keyi
    Working primarily with digital media and technological forms of artistic practice, her work investigates biodiversity and the human-centered value of technological art.

    All four artists are from the Department of Open Media, School of Intermedia Art, China Academy of Art.

     

  • Mycelium & Machine

    Studio NOWHERE

    Mycelium—the hidden neural network of the earth—with its decentralized yet intelligent form, becomes a source of inspiration for us to reimagine connection, growth, and symbiosis. Taking this as a metaphor, this work employs artificial intelligence technology to guide viewers beyond the predetermined boundaries of material forms and into a deeper dialogue of creativity. We explore how imagination and algorithms can together weave new dimensions of vision, sensation, and creation. In this field, reality itself becomes fluid and malleable—what we perceive may be even more real than reality.

    Studio NOWHERE
    A creative and design studio engaged in the artistic exploration of new media and digital interaction. With a dedicated and interdisciplinary team, we incorporate the power of technology based on artistic inspiration and creativity into new works presented to the public in an open and interactive state, in direct dialogue with the public through creative and design practices. Through innovative artwork, we bring new cultural relevance to brands and new business value to our clients.

  • As Far as the Eye Can See

    ZHANG Jinghua

    As Far as the Eye Can See is an interactive photographic installation rooted in the artist’s long-term observation of the urban landscape of Shenzhen. Through photographs taken from real locations, the work presents what the human eye can physically reach and record. At the same time, it introduces AI-generated images to respond to phenomena, figures, and moments that remain unrecordable due to the constraints of reality. By allowing AI to generate these otherwise unrecordable “realities,” the work proposes another mode of vision—one that reaches beyond what traditional photography is able to capture.

    ZHANG Jinghua
    Born in Guangdong in 1989, is a documentary director, photographer, and author of Chinese-character picture books for children, currently living and working in Shenzhen. He graduated in 2013 from the Experimental Image Studio at the School of Intermedia Art, China Academy of Art, where he studied under Yang Fudong. His practice primarily employs documentary film and photography as mediums, focusing on authentic expression drawn from lived experience while exploring deeper emotional and structural dimensions within a documentary framework.

  • A New Retelling of Nüwa Mending the Sky

    Cai Yuxuan

    A New Retelling of Nüwa Mending the Sky is a collection of AI-generated allegories inspired by the divinatory structure of the Tui Bei Tu. Blending the symbolic language of fables and morality plays, the work offers a digital projection of contemporary women’s conditions. Drawing on the lived realities of women on Xiaohongshu as narrative material, the agent “Nüwa” translates experiences of emotion, embodiment, labour, and technological bias into visual–textual allegories. While continuing the mythological figure’s maternal role of “creating humanity” and “mending the sky,” Nüwa is reconfigured here as an algorithmic generative system that “stitches” together fragments of reality through the act of repair. The work ultimately forms a digital-age “Hymn to Nüwa.”

    CAI Yuxuan
    An artist who employs mediums such as artificial intelligence, video games, and 3D digital tools to explore themes of social responsibility and feminism. Her works have been exhibited at venues including the Shanghai Tank Art Center, the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, and the FIRST International Film Festival. Her critical essay, “How Can Art Respond to ‘The Chaotic Season We Live In’?” was published in the journal Contemporary Art.

  • Compute Landscape: Intelligence and the Echo of Metaphor

    HUANG Jieyuan / ZHOU Yinglin

    Compute Landscape: Intelligence and the Echo of Metaphor is an interactive AI-generated video installation. Using the composition, layers, and metaphors of painting as a medium, the work integrates classical image grammar into the contemporary context of computing power and infrastructure. Through immersive projection and interactive mechanisms, the visuals are kept in a state of constant generation, overlay, and reverberation. By walking through the space, viewers trigger changes and enter a “gray zone” where algorithms and metaphors coexist — in an era when text is being algorithmicized, metaphor becomes a gateway to dialogue. Rather than resorting to confrontation, the work reconciles contradictions through immersive experience, allowing viewers to sense the weight of energy, resources, and order underlying artificial intelligence.

    HUANG Jieyuan
    An interdisciplinary visual artist and practice-based researcher based in Linz, Austria. He holds a Master’s degree from the Berlin University of the Arts and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Art and Design Linz, where he studies under Hito Steyerl. Huang develops new media works, paintings, and research projects centered on the image, focusing on the relationship between machines, computational devices, AI, and materiality in a digital context. His works have been exhibited at Ars Electronica in Linz, the Chengdu Biennale, and the National Art Exhibition of China, and presented at conferences including SIGGRAPH and ISEA.

    ZHOU Yinglin
    A new media and moving image artist. She holds a Master’s degree from the Berlin University of the Arts and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Art and Design Linz, where she studies under Hito Steyerl. Her practice focuses on identity, digital space, and cultural equality. Her works have been presented at Ars Electronica in Linz, Art Basel Hong Kong’s Film sector, CCCB, Loop Barcelona, UCCA Lab, and the National Art Exhibition of China, and have been included in the collaborative project “The Cultural Future” organized by the Centre Pompidou, HKW, and CCCB. Her papers have been published at conferences such as SIGGRAPH and ISEA.

  • Fate Project

    WANG Changcheng

    Fate Project uses the analogy between physiognomy and Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) as a starting point to explore whether modern society’s trust in algorithms shares similarities with ancient systems of mystical judgment. The work employs GAN’s mechanisms of image feature extraction and generation to analyze and synthesize the facial features of different social groups, reexamining the potential connections between appearance and social identity. Through this process, the work aims to discuss the potential intersections and divergences between artificial intelligence technology and traditional empirical systems in understanding and predicting the human condition.

    WANG Changcheng
    Born in 1994, is an artist who holds a Master’s degree from the Central Academy of Fine Arts. His practice spans artificial intelligence, video, installation, and painting, through which he investigates the fluidity of meaning and structure, the formation and dissolution of order, and the migration and recombination of symbols and concepts across different contexts. His recent work extends this inquiry, focusing on algorithmic processes and temporal dynamics to explore the boundaries of belief and perception in the intertwined realms of technology and natural form.

  • Future Samples

    MAO Wenjing / MENG Zhengliang / LIN Han / ZHENG Lujie

    Future Samples is a social simulation experiment that combines artificial intelligence with generative agents. The work constructs a competitive virtual parallel world where viewers can input identity information to generate their own digital life forms and observe their survival trajectories. When a digital life is eliminated, the system generates a “future sample.” Viewers can also engage in conversations with their intelligent agents through a WeChat public account, thereby gaining insights and reflections on real-life choices from this virtual survival experiment.

    MAO Wenjing
    An artist whose practice centers on the convergence of art and technology, with a current focus on artificial intelligence. Working primarily with algorithmically generated forms and data visualization, she continuously investigates the possibilities and boundaries of intelligent technology in artistic expression.

    MENG Zhengliang
    An artist whose practice revolves around light, shadow, and digital media. He constructs immersive visual fields at the intersection of the virtual and the physical. From a contemporary perspective, his work continually explores a digital aesthetic that moves away from functionality and returns to the essence of visual perception. His works have been presented in a number of international art exhibitions.

    LIN Han
    An independent game developer and creator of Epic Marketplace plugins. His projects and algorithmic practice have been selected for presentation at international conferences and featured in professional art exhibitions. Operating at the intersection of cutting-edge technology and creative design, he focuses on the relationship between technical implementation and artistic expression.

    ZHENG Lujie
    A PhD candidate at Zhejiang University and a tech artist who treats algorithm as medium and data as material. Approaching cutting-edge scientific research as a form of creative practice, he builds perceptive and interactive intelligent systems to explore diverse possibilities within human-machine relations. His research and creative work engage with fields such as medical AI and autonomous driving.

  • Little Videos

    WANG Yiquan

    Little Videos is an ongoing project of video archiving and research. The artist focuses on short videos emerging on social media—a fluid form of moving image characterised by anti-traditional, anti-technical, and anti-authoritative aesthetics and narrative structures. These seemingly fragmented and instantaneous contents not only reshape contemporary screen-based visual experience, but also function as underlying data that informs the logic of AI-based video generation. By continuously collecting such everyday online images, the project builds a long-term, evolving private archive that responds to the ways networked images are generated, circulated, and viewed through AI.

    WANG Yiquan 
    An artist and curator whose practice centers on interdisciplinary methodologies and research-based creation. His work explores the global urban context, Chinese internet culture, and intergenerational dialogue within the art ecosystem. Emphasizing participation and collective reflection, his artistic practice fosters collaboration and public engagement, inviting audiences to perceive and discuss contemporary social issues.

  • The City of Autophagy

    HE Congjin

    The City of Autophagy is a generative digital video work. Within a cube-shaped glass virtual space, an algorithm-driven urban system operates in a metabolic manner: building clusters split and proliferate like organic life forms, engulfing and reorganizing each other in a breath-like expansion, forming unexpected visual landscapes. The work attempts to integrate the computational logic of artificial intelligence with the artist’s intuitive expression at every step of the creative process, exploring a new mode of workflow for collaborating with artificial intelligence.

    HE Congjin
    A Top 20 Finalist of the UCCA Emerging Artists. His practice engages primarily with the language of new media, exploring the unique characteristics of digital mediums while seeking to intervene in public spaces through technological means. His work focuses on contemporary technological developments and future imaginaries. Grounded in personal experience yet addressing universal themes, he continually reconsiders the evolving possibilities of new media in our time. His work has received the Jury Award in the Architecture + Collaboration category at the 8th Architizer A+Awards.

  • Trained Nihil

    Non-Euclidean Navel Oranges

    Trained Nihil is an interactive work centered on artificial intelligence. Viewers can upload images and receive immediate feedback generated by the AI. The work itself is also a database continuously contemplating themes such as “life, death, and self.” Therefore, each interaction from the audience becomes nourishment for the database. Simultaneously, it symbolizes an AI-driven, virtual public space that is increasingly becoming part of our lives and engaging in the process of human cognition.

    Non-Euclidean Navel Oranges
    An artist collective founded by four members from the School of Intermedia Art, China Academy of Art: Chen Pengfan, Jin Zhexi, Song Dian, and Wang Xinyue. Operating through diverse mediums such as video games, video art, and artificial intelligence technologies, the group actively responds to developments at the forefront of technology. Their interdisciplinary practice engages directly with complex issues arising from the interplay of technology and society, demonstrating a keen sensitivity to contemporary social phenomena and a forward-looking reflection on future possibilities.

  • Geothermal Language

    LU Shan

    Geothermal Language is a short film centered on environmental concerns. Using a surreal narrative approach, it speaks from the perspective of the Earth, conveying guidance and warnings to humankind through “thermal voices” such as hot springs, fumaroles, and volcanoes. Geothermal energy, as a renewable and clean source of power, is not inexhaustible; its development depends on precise exploration and a deep understanding of geological systems. The work treats the Earth as an active speaking subject, indicating where extraction may be possible and where repair is urgently needed, while humanity is still learning how to listen. Drawing on artificial intelligence, the artist translates geothermal energy into a visual language, revealing a more primal and direct expression of the Earth hidden behind data and temperature curves.

    LU Shan
    An AI digital artist, director, and designer whose practice focuses on moving image art within the context of artificial intelligence. Through technological means, he explores the impact of technology on society and civilization, examining the reconfiguration of and critical reflection on the relationship between technology and humanity. His works have been selected for screening programs such as the 5th Pingtan IM Cross-Strait Youth Film Festival, the FIRST International Film Festival, and the Goethe-Institut’s “AIsolation” short film competition. His accolades include the Professional Group Excellence Award of the Kan Tai-keung Design Award and the “Best Art Style Award” at the Tongyi Wanxiang Global Creator Competition.

  • The Crying Man And His Elusive Shadow

    DL. Dali

    The Crying Man And His Elusive Shadow uses artificial intelligence to depict a man who, like Sisyphus, endlessly chases one goal after another. He neither knows what he is about to gain nor realizes what he is losing along the way, until at a certain moment, he sees himself again… The work poses a counter-question: are we defining our goals, or are our goals defining us?

    XU Wenjun (DL. Dali) 
    An independent AIGC creator and co-founder of Dali Sanhe STUDIO. Her works have been awarded at festivals and international competitions including the AIGC Film Unit of the Beijing International Film Festival and the ACFM InnoAsia Innovative Asia Unit of the Busan International Film Festival.

  • Song of the Distant Sun

    Tianyu ARTECH

    Song of the Distant Sun is a visual chronicle of heat, memory, and material transformation. The work treats “temperature” as an underlying language of civilizational evolution, tracing how thermal energy, as an invisible mechanism, has written a material history spanning from the Big Bang and bronze casting to modern steel industry and controlled nuclear fusion. Within the moving image, the logic of thermodynamics runs through both the macrocosm of the universe and the microcosm of human craft. Humanity’s command of heat has not only reshaped material forms, but also, through technique and making, transformed originally chaotic energy into an enduring civilizational order.

    TIANYUART LIMITED
    A joint initiative founded by scholar Hu Yilin and artist Shen Cong, dedicated to research and practice centered on the relationship with technology. The organization focuses on exploring modes of expression at the intersections of art and technology, culture and technology, as well as humanity and technology, while questioning the efficiency-centered technological paradigms of the industrial age and promoting a renewed integration of techné (craftsmanship) and thought. Against the backdrop of rapid AI advancement, TIANYUART reconsiders the evolving boundaries between technology and humanity, and examines the potential of art as a medium for public expression in the digital era.

  • Feast

    WANG Qinyi

    Feast is an experimental AIGC video work. Set around a quiet yet highly programmed banquet, the film reveals how, in the process of socialization, an individual is seen, adjusted, disciplined, and ultimately shaped into a social member who is “allowed to remain.” The dining table here is not merely a symbol, but a concrete carrier of social structure. Identity, discipline, order, and conformity all unfold upon this tabletop in invisible yet forceful ways.

    WANG Qinyi
    Born in 1998, is a mixed-media designer and artist based in Shanghai. She graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2022. Her practice focuses on collective psychology and the complex dynamics between the individual and society. By integrating affective computing, artificial intelligence, and moving image art, she explores the possibilities for contemporary narrative at the intersection of emotion and technology. Her independent film work was exhibited in 2021 at the IRCAM Forum of the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

  • S.A.C.R.E.D.Center

    XU Yanxi

    S.A.C.R.E.D.Center is an AIGC video work shaped through black humor, telling the story of an accident that occurs when a superintelligence is tasked with “aligning with human values.” The acronym in the title, “SACRED,” satirizes the tendency for language in technological discourse to be co-opted and sanctified in quasi-religious terms. The film presents the process by which algorithms automatically classify diverse and often contradictory human values, while exposing the structural conflicts and inconsistencies embedded in human data. It suggests that those spaces of misalignment that can never be fully reconciled may in fact be where language and poeticity within human nature continue to exist.

    XU Yanxi
    An artist living and working in Shanghai. She holds both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree from the School of Intermedia Art at the China Academy of Fine Arts. Currently, she works in the AI research and development department of an internet company, where she oversees aesthetic design and technical development for the full-process production of AIGC imagery, while also continuing her independent practice in AI experimental short films. Her research and creative work focus on AI-driven visual art and image production technology, with works spanning forms such as AI-generated video, real-time engine cinema, and installation.

  • Self-Trained Animal

    ZHENG Shengyun

    Self-Trained Animal is set in a fictional “brain factory.” Through black-and-white imagery and industrial metaphor, the work overlays the AI training factory with the metric-driven systems of real life: on the one hand, machines are repeatedly “self-trained”; on the other, humans, often without realizing it, also train themselves into “self-trained animals” that know only how to obey procedures and scoring standards. When all judgment is quantified, the work asks: what irreducible space of mind still remains for the human?

    ZHENG Shengyun
    Born in 1992, is a video and new media artist based in Shenyang, and a member of Dopamine Art+Tech Studio. His practice centers on artificial intelligence, utilizing monochromatic imagery, abstract narrative, and installation structures to explore the reshaping of human perception, memory, and identity within algorithmic and data-driven environments.

  • The Collaborative Stage

    CHEN Yumeng

    The Collaborative Stage takes the ecology of group livestreaming as its point of departure, showing how emotion is transformed into a marketable resource on digital platforms. What viewers purchase is not emotion itself, but rather an illusory power of “being seen.” With modern poetry as its voice-over, the film points to how, in a context of “post-panopticism,” power diffuses into interfaces and algorithms. Individuals seek belonging through self-quantification, yet gradually lose their authentic selves in the process by which emotion is encoded and priced.

    CHEN Yumeng
    Born in 2003, is an artist currently pursuing her Master’s degree in the School of Intermedia Art at the China Academy of Fine Arts. Working primarily with moving image and photography, her practice unfolds through a composite formal language. Beginning from personal lived experience, she traces the mirrored relationship between the individual and reality through affective structures. Her works have been exhibited at venues including the Museum of Oriental Art Tokyo, 798 Ying Gallery, Jing’an District Cultural Center in Shanghai, FUJIFILM X-Space Hangzhou, and Wuhan Image Art Center.

  • Desert Star

    In Vitro（HU Xiyue/XIAO Xing)

    Desert Star is an immersive interactive installation. Centered on a future computer that has lost its external senses, the work unfolds a dreamlike narrative of autonomy, embodied perception, self-replication, and ecological crisis through its dialogue with a “firebird.” The viewers’ body temperature, position, and movement intervene in real time in the generation of imagery, sound, and a virtual ecology, turning the space into an ever-evolving perceptual field where the machine’s dream becomes intertwined with human presence.

    XIAO Xing
    Born in 1991, is a Chinese visual and digital artist, and co-founder of the artist collective In Vitro and the studio Vitroscape. A graduate of Le Fresnoy and the École supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, his practice works across moving image, interactive systems, VR, AI, and spatial narrative, with a sustained focus on the relationship between technology, living systems, and perceptual experience.

    HU Xiyue 
    Born in 1991, is a Chinese visual and digital artist, and co-founder of the artist collective In Vitro and the studio Vitroscape. A graduate of Le Fresnoy and the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan, her practice combines digital moving image, real-time interaction, AI, AR, and immersive installation, continually exploring how bodies, environments, and narrative structures are generated within mixed reality.

Season 3｜Overview

GEN-：_ x UABB