Author: Qian Xu

Private Garden

Private Garden is an interactive installation which projects computer generated and processed garden visuals onto the surface of a bed. Visitors can lie in the bed and interact with the projected garden visuals and ambient sound with their body movement.

Inspiration 

I’ve loved gardens since I was a kid. Whenever I’m stressed or sad, I would always go for a walk in the garden. Sitting in the garden, reading some books, or just listening to the birds will make me feel better. I also love to hangout with friends in the garden, we would chat, laugh, eat and have a good time.

The year 2020 in which the covid pandemic started was an emotionally difficult time for everyone. During the quarantine, I noticed that I started to spend more and more time in my bed. Some days were particularly stressful and I would just lie in bed all day, trying to escape from reality. On other cheerful days I would sometimes sit on the bed in pyjamas, facetime with friends, read books and listen to music. I realised that the bed has become an intimate and versatile place for me. It accompanied me through all my highs and lows and It almost feels like I had a garden in my bedroom. This resemblance inspired me to develop Private Garden.

Traditional Chinese garden and generative neural network

I was born in Suzhou, a city famous for traditional Chinese gardens. Unlike Italian or French gardens, traditional Chinese gardens cannot be fully experienced within a single glance. You have to discover the garden following the designed path. One after another, the scene will gradually reveal itself as you walk through it. Having this in mind, I constructed an image database of Suzhou gardens. Then I trained a generative neural network with this database, which generates an ever changing artificial garden. Each generated image only shows a fraction of the garden, for example a pavilion, a pond, the snow on the early blooms, a view of lush greenery through the window.  Browsing through these changing visuals one by one feels like walking in an actual traditional Chinese garden.

Interaction

Private Garden is an interactive installation. Visitors can lie in the bed and move their body to interact with the projected garden visuals. Imagine when you are busy walking around the garden and exploring, insects and birds might be scared away and you might also not pay enough attention to the surrounding environment. So when the visitor moves a lot in bed, the garden visual will turn more fragmented and change rapidly into other scenes and the ambient sound will be turned down.

On the contrary, when the visitor stays calm and still in bed, the changing visual will slow down on the current scene and show more detail. Just as if you find a place in the garden that you like and decide to take a closer look and enjoy this moment. And then you start to hear the sound of the wind blowing through the leaves, birds and insects singing. To simulate this experience, the ambient sound volume will be turned up gradually.

To sum up, the goal is to create an immersive yet intimate environment, in which visitors can stretch their bodies freely and have a relaxing experience interacting with the ever-changing artificial garden.

SUAN

Suan (Chinese: to calculate) is an installation projecting fractal patterns and animations based on parameter input from an abacus. Visitors participate by playing with the abacus. A hidden camera captures the numbers, which participants enter on the abacus. These numbers will be used as different parameters to generate different fractal image. 

The work shows the charm of mathematics in a different approach. Filled with cultural and artistic inspirations, it is also accessible to people from different age range, education level and nationality. One does not need to know exactly what’s going on with the complex calculation to enjoy the beauty of mathematics.

Technical support: Dr. -Ing. Ding Luo

This project was created and exhibited in Ars Electronica Festival 2016. The artwork was also exhibited in Kunstuniversität Linz Rundgang 2016 and exhibition “Back to the Future” in bb15.

@ Ars Electronica Festival 2016

@ Ars Electronica Festival 2016

2016 @bb15

Jellyfish

Jellyfish is a interactive music instrument created for Interface Culture Musikkapelle live performance in 2016.

The position and movement data of two artificial jellyfish is captured and turned into an audio output. The artist wanted to translate the dance move of jellyfish into a sound and to transform the fish tank into an instrument.

Together with Johannes Wernicke, Jelena Veljkovic, Ali Douba, and Yuji Miyano, these five artists did an live performance with their creative instruments titled Nurb, aiming at shaping sounds with physical shapes.

@bb15 Linz

Concert IC Musikkapelle 2016

audio sample of the jellyfish instrument

Textmos

Textmos is a concept design for an interactive installation which focuses on creating a social interface.

As human beings, we engage in social relationships through everyday conversations. As a form of interactive and spontaneous communication, conversation allows us to transfer information, ideas and emotions and helps us to establish and maintain social ties with each other. With the recent rapid development of information technology and raising popularisation of mobile devices, more and more conversations are conducted through the internet, with a tap on the fingertips. As an obvious advantage, instant message apps and SMS create opportunities for people to have conversations over distances in the form of instant messages. But perhaps a subtle effect of this technology is that the whole conversation is automatically documented. For people with close relationships, such record means more than a message log, but shared memories and emotions, which could be cherished and recollected. Sometimes reviewing message log feel just like going through a photo album. But with cellphones, this often has to be done by tediously and endlessly scrolling down on the touch screen.

Textmos is a social interface experiment to provide a new interface for this intimate experience. Once stepped into the room, the participants are asked to connected to the local wireless network, which prompt for uploading the message history between the participants. Four projectors are used to project the message log onto the four walls in a random manner. Kinect sensors are installed to monitor the location of the participants, so that when they walk towards a specific area in the room, the messages on the wall in that direction is automatically zoomed in with more detail. Based on keyword search, Textmos will find other connected conversations and link them together in the projection. Therefore the participants can re-live the shared feelings and re-discover their shared memories.

Silk Road－ Interactive Installation

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Interactive installation design. Installed in exhibition to commemorate cooperation between Zhejiang University and Xinjiang University.

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This design is based on two conceptual images: the Silk Road and the Dap (musical instrument in Xinjiang). The Dap drums are aligned according to the geographically winding path of the Silk Road, in which each drum holds the name of a symbolic town along this path. The interactive lighting is designed to extend towards both ends of the path, symbolising the transmission and communication between both cultures. Meanwhile, the shape and interactive method imitate the way of playing the Dap drum, demonstrating the hospitality of the Uyghur people as well as their natural talents in singing and dancing.

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The installation design“Silk Road” is composed of two states: While inactive, each light unit remains at an independent breathing status with the names on the drums indistinctly recognisable, allowing the device to show a sense of life even at inactive state.

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When stricken, the drum generates an acoustic feedback and starting from the stricken unit, the light in each drum will be activated successively towards both ends of the device. Such visual effect of extending and transmitting light expresses the design consideration of cultural communication.

Later Note- APP design

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When faced with two challenging tasks, in order to avoid the complicated one, people tend to choose the easier task, which they would put off too if the complicated one had not been presented.

LATER-portfolio 2015 04 26Based on this psychological phenomenon, we designed Later Note, a intuitive, fast, user-friendly reminder APP which tolerates Procrastination but also helps getting tasks done at the same time.

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1. It only takes three taps to set a new reminder with Later Note, no more noisy date-pickers.

2. Statistics allow user to see how much they have achieved. Try to unlock all the achievements while accomplishing daily tasks.

3. Overdue tasks can be easily reset in history page. Don’t feel bad if you failed one task, there’s always a second chance.

4. One tap to put off the task, better later than never.

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Each time the user puts one task off, LATER NOTE suggests another option from the following tasks to help the user save time in a different way.

Exchange- App Design

exchange-portfolio 2015 04 26“Exchange” is a college-based SNS app. In this social network, the users aim to exchang skills by learning from each other and discussing their skill learning experience. As an app combining learning and social networking, users can also creating personal page and making friends with similar interests in learning.

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The major functionality of „Exchange“ is to allow users to tag their acquired and desired skills, the app will help the users to search, filter and match learning partner so that both could exchange their skills. Users can also ask questions, start discussions, share learning experience with each other, apply to open online/offline learning group, as well as creating personal page and making friends with similar interests in learning.

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A LIFE WITH FUTURE COMPUTING – FUJITSU workshop

sfun-portfolio 3 2015 04 26副本S-fun was a concept design developed during a one-week Workshop organised by FUJITSU, featuring theme “A LIFE WITH FUTURE COMPUTING”.

sfun-portfolio 2 2015 04 26副本Later in the same year, S-fun was exhibited in Hong Kong Design Center as workshop project with FUJITSU during Business of  Design Week 2010.

sfun-portfolio 2015 04 26S-fun is designed for modern people living a sonic lifestyle. With fast speed, high-quality information and User-oriented system design, one can easily do shopping. 

sfun-portfolio 2 2015 04 26 Not only is S-fun a mobile device, which are capable of searching, shopping and designing. More importantly, S-fun establishes communication between consumers and producers by enable users to upload their own designs, which helps to improve products and create new designs. To create such communication is our interpretation for “a step forward”.

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Banner design for the University website.

Distant Hills

Emotional Interactive Product design, an integrated Kitchen with Extension.srtp-portfolio 2015 04 26

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Through the design of extending space, the „Distant Hills“ changes the side-by-side operational pattern in a traditional kitchen and creates an interactive space for free face-to-face communication. Meanwhile, changeable shape design not only extends usable space but also grants a dynamic feature.

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The shape of the design is inspired by the conceptual image of the rolling mountains in a distance. To develop an overall style of simplicity and freshness, curves with classical essence are combined with a vivid color of bright olive drab which is associated with spring days full of vigor. In order to create maximum practicality in the limited space, the “Distant Hills” integrates all comment functionalities of kitchen into a single independent island. Below the operational platform is a translucent plant area, which adds natural vigor to life.

In to the Woods

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I like to work with wood and leather as a hobby, because the natural materials and the plain process of crafting grants me a calm and peaceful state of mind. Compared with fast-paced entertainment, I would rather spend time with these natural materials and enjoy the process of transforming them from a raw state into a meaningful piece of object.

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Above is a hand-made ring of African Blackwood.