Sheng 生 2.0

From CIFRA: What is it like to have a digital baby? And what does a being who has absorbed the consciousness of the entire universe feel? In Snow Yunxue Fu's curatorial playlist, artists challenge the most fundamental ideas of our culture and redefine what it means to be human in the digital age. From Curator Snow Yunxue Fu and Arts Writer Natasha Chuk: Sheng 生 (2.0), the Chinese character for life, living, and birth, is a selection curated by new media artist Snow Yunxue Fu and her digital human Daughter ICE in a reimagining on the digital platform CIFRA of an earlier iteration presented in the metaverse space VR WSPark, created by Fu and co-hosted by DSLCollection. The concept of Sheng 生 is uniquely interpreted through works focused on humans and non-human others, imaginary states of existence, and virtual pathways for cultivating family relationships, digital legacies, and borderless communal experiences across emerging liminal states and digital landscapes. Fu’s own exploration of digital humanhood manifests in Daughter ICE, a digital human with agency and independence, and realized in Daughter ICE’s metaverse-based residence “Running Island Floating Island” (2023), a virtual backdrop for digital human expression and a gathering place for family and friends from anywhere in the world. In “Pretty Poly” (2017), Carla Gannis recreates—through song, instrumentation, and the artist’s avatar—a childhood memory of her family’s shared experience of storytelling. Here the murdered Polly from the original folk ballad is playfully revamped into a confident polymath zipping across space and time on her dulcimer-shaped rocket. “ORIXA: Planet Aris” (2022) is a monologue written by Josette Roberts in collaboration with The ORIXA Project, a mixed reality experience inspired by the Orishas and Black womxn of the African diaspora, led by interdisciplinary artists MaryAnn Talavera and Reese Antoinette. Delivered by the digital human MJ, the soliloquy ruminates on the polysemous nature of what a mother is: ranging from life, to death, to the essence of us all. Virtual human Genesis Kai interprets cultural heritage and digital existence in“Manifest” (2021), where the avatar’s digital birth from a digital womb is performed, and in “The Red Prayer of Park Young Sook’s Moon Jar” (2023), inspired by Korean ceramicist Young Sook Park’s iconic “Moon Jar” to represent a glowing celestial body evoking lunar prayer, hope, and the anticipation of life to form. Frank Yefeng Wang’s “The Whimsical Characters” (“Groundless Protag”) (2019–) is an infinitely looping experimental 3D animation addressing the chaotic in-betweenness of a multicultural identity formed by migration, originary estrangement, and cultural negotiation. Claudia Hart’s “Recumulations” (2010/19) is in dialogue with Trisha Brown’s dance choreography for “Accumulations” (1971) in a live recreation by performance artist Roberto Sifuentes. His movements were recorded then mapped onto a 3D model to create a cyborg choreography expressed by a racially and gender fluid digital being. Suki Violet Su’s “SKINSEQ-Dreaming” (2022)—inspired by the ancient philosopher Zhuang Zhou’s dream of becoming a butterfly—uses the face to converge individual expression and the consciousness of the universe. Christen Smith’s abstract animation “Ofeelia at the Moment of Consciousness Before Her Rebirth” (2023) subverts Shakespeare’s tragic heroine Ophelia through the healing and reconstruction of a broken soul, body, mind, and heart. Alex M. Lee’s “The Fold: Episode II” (2022) explores the potential of AI as a force of creative expression and translator of the evolution of technical thinking across Western and Eastern cultures and philosophies. Tianyu Qiu explores the relations between geographies, maps, and perception in an age of information excess and competing information flows in “Fragmented Reality (Ukraine, Korea Peninsula, Okinawa, Shanghai)” (2022), which organizes geographic locations into multilayered blocks using satellite image maps from Google Earth. Yuge Zhou’s “Moon Drawings” (2022) pairs the rhythm of ritual with the uncertainty of postponement. Symbolizing family reunion, Zhou traces the shape of a full moon in snow with her suitcase for the duration her trip home to China is delayed. Exhibition text by Natasha Chuk, media theorist and arts writer.