Digitized City

Viewers interact with Chinese characters projected on the facade of the ArtScience Museum in Singapore. To create new visual worlds, viewers select and swipe characters toward the facade of the building using a smartphone application. Through this gesture, images correlating with the meaning of the characters emerge on the facade. The result is a colorful, multi-sensory space that continuously evolves as the images that are released from the characters influence one another, creating an immersive computer-generated world.

The images that are born from the characters appear in various positions within the virtual space, and the physical influences and connections among the objects are calculated in real time, producing complex animations inspired by nature. For example, when the wind blows the objects are influenced by the wind; images of butterflies move toward flowers and away from fire. These complex interactions between the viewers and characters mean that each interaction is unique, just as every event in the natural world is unique.

Chinese characters were first carved in turtle shell and ox or deer bones, and were engraved in bronzeware. It can be said that at that time, each character contained its own world. Through the characters in this work, the world that you call up, and the worlds that those around you call up, connect and influence each other to create a new world.