The 'Digital-Organ of Fantasy' is a research-based project that encompasses interactive installation, multimedia storytelling about Chinese cybernetics theory, information fantasies, the digital sublime and myth. 

 

Richard Dawkins introduces the concept of memetics and social behaviors in his seminal work "The Selfish Gene", which introduces the concept of culture contamination. I’m very interested in memetics because they capture the essence of specific historical moments and the depth of human emotions, anxieties, desires, and fantasies. Social contamination has fashion, melody, slang, and even expands to technology. Beyond the pragmatic perspectives on technology, how people react to emerging technology with imagination and peculiar fantasies contributes to our intersubjective lifeworld. 

 

My research begins with the Qigong fever (气功热) of 1970s China, where ancient cultural practices intersected with the influx of information technology. The movement of Qigong imagines the human body as a transparent interface, and a magical device promising instant information transmission. Unlike Western cybernetic research, cybernetics in China extends to body politics and collective technological imagination. It stimulated utopian and techno-futuristic imaginations and unleashed desires, senses of freedom, and aspirations for multiple possibilities, but it also turned out to be depressing and dystopian. As socialist subjects were emptied out and marginalized, the human body turned into a ceaseless information-processing machine for value extraction and was increasingly subject to various ideological and marketing “information bombs.” 

In my project, the human body serves as an activator, engaging with surreal digital ghosts that transcend reality. By incorporating tangible objects and ghost interfaces, I aim to create a space for the contamination of reality, transforming the deepest realms of weirdness, absurdity, and humor. Through an array of XR hologram glasses and ultrasonic directional speakers dispersed throughout the space, audiences are invited to assemble a reality of uncanny intimacy and mysterious awe regarding digital hope and control.