Published in Counterstructural Commons as a chapter (Rhizome), May 2026. Part I. The Library Imagine a dark, massive library where the books are glued to the shelves. The library has a mechanical track on the floor, and a robot arm fixed onto it. Visitors walk in with a flashlight which they can use to retrieve the books. They shine the light on a shelf labeled with the topic of their interest.
Sep – Oct, 2025 · 汪洋 WANG Yang 写在前面 我们的世界被层层的技术调解，技术对生活的影响如此巨大它几乎要获得主体性。本课程将创作者（不管是艺术家还是设计师或者其他文化工作者）重新定位为一股重要的再定向力量 — 一定程度上获得一些对于技术的清醒以及转动方向盘的实在力。技术并非中立的工具；它是一种拥有自身历史、政治和社会影响力的强大媒介。为了让创作者承担起这一责任，创作者们必须首先理解技术的根本性质及其对我们的深远影响。 本课程分为两个部分。首先，我们将通过探究丰富的技术思想史来建立批判性的基础。我们将重温技术哲学和软件研究中的部分核心思想，超越简单的叙述，将技术视为我们人类体验中构成性的一部分，而非一系列不相关的工具。 其次，我们将通过"打开黑箱"的方式来回应当前的人工智能潮。通过使用TensorFlow和Keras等框架的实践方法，学生将从零开始构建一个非常基础的神经网络模型，揭示这些系统底层逻辑的工作原理。尽管这简单的模型与当今最大的模型相比显得原始，但其基本原理是相同的，这为艺术家提供了至关重要的清晰认知。 通过将批判性论述与动手实践相结合，本课程赋予艺术家一个全新的视角——使他们不仅能够认识自己在历史思想洪流中的位置，还能理解周遭变化的速率。有了这些知识，他们可以重塑自己与技术的关系，成为历史方向的主动塑造者，而非被动的乘客。 Our world is mediated layer upon layer by technology. The influence of technology on life is so immense that it almost acquires subjectivity of its own. This course repositions creators—whether artists, designers, or other cultural workers—as a vital re-orienting force, endowing them with a measure of lucidity about technology and a tangible capacity to grasp the steering wheel.
Momv, Installation view at Times Museum, Guangzhou, China. March, 2025 Brief Mountain of Many Voices is an alternative reality game and installation that begins with digital narrative experiences and hands-on creation, culminating in a communal ritual of divination and offering. Through intuitive digital interfaces, players embark on a pilgrimage, assuming the role of an urban traverser who eventually ascends a mystical mountain. Along this journey, they encounter layers of memories, voices, and visions that are intricately interwoven into an evolving narrative.
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Many of our past works critique the dominant schemes of designing and developing computing systems, as we hold the view that computing systems are increasingly becoming the mediating layer between us and reality. As a result, the most important design challenge in our age is the reexamination of our computing systems, as any societal change cannot be complete without it. Hubert Dreyfus (1929-2017, American philosopher) pointed out that one must look into the ontological, epistemological, and psychological assumptions of computation and question their limits and legitimacy.
Computing systems, often seen as objects rather than what they really are in essence—a collective of logic—are increasingly becoming the mediating layer between us and the real, yet they are becoming more and more homogenized, controlling, and gradually transforming the multidimensional future into a one-dimensional racetrack. As a result, the most important design challenge in our age is the reexamination of our computing systems, as any societal change cannot be complete without it.
Temple of Forgotten Spirits is an interactive ritual of collaborative mythmaking that invited participants to co-author a symbolic tale using a natural language model and diffusion model, simulated divination, and folk narrative traditions blended with new media. Collective Worldmaking The experience began with attendees gathering together to contribute imaginary elements towards a partially constructed magical realist story. As passages were read aloud, participants added their own words and phrases which were then fed into algorithmic systems, outputting surreal images that manifested the group’s psychological state into symbolic graphics containing objects projected in real-time.
Read on LEAP’s website
Digital Video, English and Mandarin, 2022 “Out of Sight,” a digital video created by zzyw, showcases the duo’s latest installment in their “Rule-making as Worldmaking” series. Through the use of a “desktop cinema” format, the video explores zzyw’s research on rulemaking in simulated computational environments, specifically drawing upon their collective work on ThingThingThing from 2019 to 2021. This video not only provides insight into zzyw’s thought-provoking research, but also offers a glimpse into the engineering efforts behind the creation of ThingThingThing.
About the podcast “卡壳”（Cacotopia）是一个收集不同声音的播客项目，专注于那些在日常生活中容易被忽略的声音。“卡壳”每期邀请1～2位艺术家、学者、研究者作为嘉宾，与我们共同分享他们跨学科的创作、文本和思考。 Apple Podcast New York-based artist duo zzyw (Qi Zhenzhen and Wang Yang) has been exploring the boundary of the “computable” and the “uncomputable” since their formation. In this episode of Cacotopia, we are pleased to invite them to explore the issue of computation from an artistic perspective. As a new media art and research collective, they also share their views on the current new media works.
The workshop, hosted by New York-based art and research duo ZZYW, focuses on the concepts of systems theory and its application to various computational, social, and biological phenomena. Participants are guided through examples of different systems, including the human body, Tulip Mania, and the Exquisite Corpse game. Following this, they engage in a collective drawing exercise to design their own algorithmic entities or ‘Things.’ These ‘Things’ are then injected into a shared virtual world, creating a live, accessible simulation that forms part of the ongoing “World on a Wire” exhibition.
Exhibition History 2025 City Campus Art Museum, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Guangzhou, China 2025 PARC 杭州, Hangzhou, China 2024 HOW Art Museum, Shanghai, China 2024 Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong SAR 2024 Today Art Museum, Beijing, China 2024 HEK (Haus der Elektronischen Künste), Basel, Switzerland 2024 Museum MACAN (Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara), Jakarta, Indonesia 2024 Objectifs, Singapore 2023 China Academy of Art, Shanghai, China 2023 Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria 2023 Elektra Virtual Museum, Montreal, Canada 2023 HMG, Yongin, South Korea Other Spring (OS) is a theory-fiction world-building project.
A Digital Transformation in Design: Changing Processes and Practices (Part II) About the FATE conference FATE is an educational association focused on promoting excellence in the development and teaching of foundational courses in studio and art history at the college level. It is a volunteer-run organization that has been actively working for over 30 years to enhance instructional methodologies and theories for the early years of college art education. FATE’s influence spans across independent colleges, universities, community colleges, and high school programs in the United States and Canada.
Exhibition History Installation view at Today Art Museum, Beijing. July, 2023 《下海》是一款以九十年代的中国为背景的复古像素风格叙事游戏。故事发生在中国北方某工业城镇,讲述了年轻人小吴在公共澡堂打工的经历。澡堂是当地居民最常聚集休闲的场所,也是信息交流的重要场域。小吴在这里与各种各样的人发生短暂却意味深长的交流和碰撞,在互动中不断受到潜移默化的影响。 《下海》试图捕捉当时的私密故事,营造一个受中国现代化浸染的似曾相识且奇幻的昨日世界,通过数字游戏的方式让玩家探索发现。 这是团队的首款传统叙事游戏,其故事探讨了在经济逐渐繁荣的过程中,个人时常会经历的新奇情感,因为他们必须不断适应新的环境。这种复杂的成长、变化和自我发现的经历定义了80后和90后在中国成长的共同记忆。 此次展出的《下海》是制作组特别为展览定制的版本。不同于原作的线性叙事,展览版通过四个平行的空间——白天、黑夜、游戏厅与小康家,展开空间式的叙事。四个看似碎片化的空间,皆由游戏的核心主题贯穿联系。艺术家还为每个空间运用了独特的视觉和技术手法,像素2D、像素3D与现代3D,呈现出多种视觉风格。这种多空间、多样式的呈现,邀请观众从崭新视角审视游戏作为艺术媒介的可能,揣摩其叙事内容。空间之间的细节暗示出更深层的关联,等待观众发掘。 project brief Our first traditional narrative game project, “Go To Sea.” After focusing on simulations and computational projects for nearly a decade, we are now able to tell a meaningful story that resonates with children who grew up in 80s/90s China. “Go To Sea” is a retro pixel narrative game set in China during the 1990s, a time when the country underwent rapid privatization.
This computational studio course immerses students in the fundamentals of simulated worldbuilding, covering both technical implementation and critical theoretical contexts. Using tools like Unity, Blender, and coding, students learn systems design, modeling, animation, interactivity, and critical approaches for realizing virtual environments and experiences. Assignments progress from conceptual experiments to hands-on creation of behaviors, forces, and narratives through 3D assets, shaders, and other computational methods. Readings ground technical tutorials in relevant media theory, cybernetics, critical game studies, and object-oriented ontology, informing in-depth discussions on notions like agency, emergence, complexity, and control.
Commissioned by ESP Culture Magazine, issue 2. April, 2021 You and I no longer Live in the Same World. In a 2018 lecture titled A Tale of Seven Planets, philosopher Bruno Latour observed that “we no longer seem to live on the same planet.” Some of us believe that the earth is trembling, and others do not recognize climate issues. Deep-rooted disputes of what used to be referred to as Nature have further expanded into territorializing forces in culture and politics.
Collective Fortune-telling workshop at Pioneer Works COVID has taken our reliance on software to the next level. We now rely on software for managing our days from the moment we wake up until we go to sleep. Software predicts the future based on fixed patterns from the past. It produces procedures instead of experiences and solutions instead of care. On the other hand, fortune-telling is an ancient language of change. It elucidates, unlearns, and reworks patterns.
Read the article on Rhizome (https://rhizome.org/editorial/2021/feb/17/architecting-emergence/) on Feb 17, 2021
Paper and (virtual) presentation at Museum 2050, He Museum, Shunde, Guangdong, 2020. In this research paper, the researchers review theoretical developments on the language of new media as computation simulation. They present a case study on computational simulation as collaborative making in the interdisciplinary space, and its implication on architecting emergence. 在这篇研究论文中，研究员将回顾新媒体语言作为计算模拟的理论发展。他们将分享一个案例研究，将计算模拟作为美术馆跨学科空间的一种协作创作模式，并探讨它对构建涌现系统的影响。
A Step-By-Step Guide on Creating Meaningful Zones of Meaninglessness Today, life seems increasingly prescribed, recursive, narrowing. Stories depicted by mainstream media is increasingly divided. What are the conditions that enabled such polarizing experiences? What is the language of our time, poetically and procedurally, that could rework such conditions? As artists, technologists, educators, and human being, what tools do we have that could activate the world, take it apart, multiply and transform it – to unloop?
What is a Computational Object? Reimagining Object Interaction: Exploring the Boundaries of Physical and Computational Realities with ThingThingThing This presentation offered an exploration of the nature of objects, both physical and digital, and how they can be altered through interactions. It sought to redefine the way we perceive objects and their implications in our world, extending beyond traditional human-centered perspectives. The talk dove into the topic of computational objects, presenting them as a unique blend of variables, functions, and properties tied to digital or physical entities, challenging the notion of things only existing within the purview of human conception.
Contemporary digital culture presents a significant challenge in balancing functionality and openness in communication. The design of the current hyperlinked communication model, inherited from the cybernetics system invented during WWII by Norbert Wiener, prioritizes efficiency at the expense of openness. This results in a situation where we paraphrase each other instead of expressing anything that is truly different. The self-referential circuit created by this system controls information, but it limits the possibilities for variety and chance that machines offer.
Brief ThingThingThing is a computational environment that facilitates the creation and interaction of digital entities. Developed through collaborative workshops, it allows participants to define entities within certain parameters. Once introduced into the system, these entities exist and interact autonomously, evolving without further direct human intervention. The visual design of ThingThingThing is characterized by its abstract, geometric aesthetic. The creatures and the environment they inhabit are intentionally non-realistic, highlighting the project’s focus on systemic interactions rather than visual fidelity.
In today’s world, life is increasingly prescribed, recursive, and narrowing due to the pervasive influence of digital technologies and the underlying protocols that structure our lives1. Stiegler2 critiques contemporary political economy, focusing on how digital technologies contribute to a loss of individual autonomy, while Crary3 examines the impact of late capitalism on our daily lives, highlighting the erosion of boundaries between work and leisure. Software systems, as explored by Hayles4 and Chun1, automate thoughts and expressions, promoting efficiency and patterns at the expense of human experiences that deviate from the norm, shaping our understanding of identity, history, and culture.
ThingThingThing workshop held at Asia Art Archive in America at Asia Art Archive in America An art video game is like daydreaming – a dream that one can go back to over and over again. Objects within the Game are external manifestations of their creators’ spirits. While their creators are tied up with the reality of life, these tiny Objects awaken in this wondrous space of “grandeur” (Gustave Bachelard, 1948), brought to life through the imagination of the Game creators.
First published on BLINK 布林客 Magazine, 2017 March issue. So sinful; So good As an art viewer, I am constantly drawn towards digitally interactive artworks. When I visited the 2017 Whitney Biennale, it was as if my legs grew a mind of their own and dragged the rest of me towards the VR films by Jordan Wolfson and kinetic sculptures by Jon Kessler.   However, as an artist who appreciates witty concepts and good laughs, I am often ashamed.
LENNA is a computing system that produces graphic design on its own. The system consists of multiple software and hardware components, including a custom-written computer algorithm running on a modern computer, a connected plot printer, and a monitor displaying the design process. The system is programmed to create graphic designs that follow the visual principles of the most popular International Typographic Style, often referred to as Swiss Style. This design style was developed in the 1920s in Europe and later widely adopted by American designers.