NUCLEUS (2022)

NUCLEUS is a site-specific generative installation at Art Basel Miami 2022. Suspended above the street at 15’ in diameter, the installation is comprised of 3 components. The Core is a spherical LED screen, displaying generative shader content via a camera below the installation. The Crust is spherical carbon fiber panels with an array of one-way mirror film. The Orbital is a metal icosahedron skeleton surrounding the sphere, with an upper hemisphere made of one-way mirror and a lower hemisphere made of metal crossbars.

In the day, the sphere is a mirrored orb – reflecting sunlight from its mirrors and absorbing light from the dark acrylic. But at night, the color changing acrylic is backlight by the LED underneath and the color inverts, with the negative space now emitting light from within.

From afar, NUCLEUS will be visible as a globe from 360 degrees – even through the one-way mirrors that cover the upper hemisphere. Standing from directly below, audiences can view inside the Orbital to see the NUCLEUS reflected back at them with infinity mirrors – inviting the viewer to explore all angles to distort spatial awareness. Viewing from underneath will also activate the camera, creating shader feedback loops that create the generative visuals.

TUMULTUOUS DREAMS OF MODERN LIVING (2022)

A public art installation at Oi! Street Art Space in Hong Kong, commissioned by the Hong Kong Leisure and Cultural Services Department. Open to the public from May 2022 to June 2023.

Shot entirely in camera using miniatures and LED screens with no post VFX, the work provides viewers with a voyeuristic perspective into an upside-down bedroom, where a sleeping person experiences a turbulent dream in which time and space collapse. It is a visualization of the anxieties of the postmodern condition. During the phases of dreaming (titled Recall, Reset, Reorient, Realign, and Return), the dreamer experiences moments in which fragmented memories are recalled and reprocessed in a sort of ego death. Finally, the dreamer awakens with these fragments realigned in the mind.

DREAMRAVE (2019)

Dreamrave is a transmedia installation that interrogates the intersection of the digital & physical via collective dreaming by artist Adrian Yu, hosted at Eaton HK in partnership with NY-based creative studio Offline Projects.

Designed to recreate the four stages of sleep across 96 hours at Eaton HK during Hong Kong Art Week, Dreamrave is comprised of two interconnected interactive installations: a physical 350 square foot infinity tunnel with acrylic mirrors, a floor-to-ceiling LED wall, and a feedback looping camera; and an interactive livestream experience where participants can manipulate the visuals at the physical installation via Dreamrave.Space.

The piece simulates the human sleep cycle, split into 4 unique acts: SELF, ASCENSION, SUBMERSION, and VOID. Following a nonlinear narrative of a mind’s ego-death, each scene shows the perspective of one as they dream up a world rooted in reality, before ascending to hyperreality and plunging into the abyss and losing their sense of self. Shot on 16mm film with an original score by electronic musician Danny L. Harle from P.C. Music, the audio-visual content is processed algorithmically with typography & live footage generated by participants both within the space via a feedback loop camera pointed at the screen, and participants online – so that each viewing is completely unique.

The digital web experience, developed in collaboration with interactive artist Ian Glover, connects participants online into the collective consciousness. Speaking to a simulation terminal, participants answer questions posed by the digital entity that will insert user-generated type into the physical installation & live feed – building a permanent imprint of one's consciousness into the worldwide dream simulation.

A short film Dreamrave (2019) accompanied the installation. Shot in HK and NY and featuring an original score by Danny L. Harle, it explored ideas of ego death and collective dreaming across the physical & virtual.

PACKAGED GOOD (2019)

Packaged Good (2019) is an audio-visual installation featuring a large acrylic container filled with water. The far facing panel of the container is layered with a LED wall that displays a looping video of an androgynous Asian body writhing in liquid space as a light source rotates around it. Using neural networks, the face is then swapped out with a multitude of other Asian faces – both male and female.

Soundtracked by an original score by Lord RAJA, the film follows a protagonist in three acts of birth, life, and death – battling opposing forces within an inescapable space.

YELLOW (2018)

A site-specific installation at the corner of Wooster & Canal Street in Chinatown, NY.

As an artist, I am infatuated with specificity – this being site specificity and cultural specificity. I believe it is the duty of both the artist & audience to articulate and perceive where the work lies, in respect to both socio-geographical space & cultural identity.

In respect to my own identity, my work allows me to barter with my audience; we enter into a transaction of understanding which centers on both place and being.

Upon encountering YELLOW, there are two principles to note:

1. The piece occupies an appropriated space within a historically Eastern neighborhood, within a Western society.

2. As a participant in this work, you are likely shaped by Western semiotic systems – and that has defined your perspective.

With this work, I aim to challenge stereotypical notions of Eastern & Western kitsch. By pitting the two sensibilities against one another, they work to assault the senses.

– AMNY
– Arsty