Experimental Design
Feiqi Wang
Feiqi Wang is a visual artist and graphic designer. Her practice explores visualization of interesting parallels between human philosophical thinking and scientific technical mechanism - questioning how moving images, games and physical interactions evolve together to create personal experiences.
After studying Visual Communication Design in China Central Academy of Fine Arts, Feiqi worked as a visual designer in Beijing. In 2018, she moved to London to study Information Experience Design at the Royal College of Art, where she further developed her interest in the crossover between art, design and sound, using digital technologies and physical interaction design. Currently Feiqi is based in London as a freelance designer making 3D stuff for moving images and indie video games, applying her visual and research skills to both art and commercial projects.
The interesting parallel relations between human philosophical thinking and scientific technical mechanism are the subjects of her work. Unpredictability of universe and computational pseudo-randomness, spiritual eternity and mathmetical infinity, these beautiful juxtapositions of human beliefs and science theories display a conflicting but romantic effect. She considered herself as “an outsider and observer”, and her artworks document her believes in non-anthropocentrism that we are sharing a same universal law with all other existence without exception.
When we feed a photo of ourselves to the computer, its recognition process actually deconstructs us into pixels to figure out what we are. Strictly speaking, we are a complicated reconstruction of lines, arcs and pixels in the eyes of a computer. This is a very interesting phenomenon of machine’s vision that it always pays attention to textures and patterns at first glimpse, and in some occasions, so do us human beings. When most of us are fed with news images and social media footages of subjects like military parades and massive gymnastic events, as performers are placed like a single pixel in a huge matrix of thousands of similar appearance, these footages are so unreal to believe they never experience digital compositing. More or less, our view of these unfamiliar scenarios seems to switch into that of a machine. In this process of gazing, not only the unified performers become digits, but also viewers are becoming machine-like. Just like a computer vision recognition process, our attention immediately gets caught by these shocking patterns and arrays at the very beginning. We might see collectivity, system and precise organization. We see speed, command, power, even see the beauty of geometry. Finally, we see individuals.
Performers, soldiers, nurses, policemen, and any other collections of people, with the same or different ethnic backgrounds, genders, professions, beliefs and personalities, are possibly being managed into these human arrays in political performances. This is not rare to see in some societies. In contrast, when we go hand in hand in a parade to protest for our liberty of human rights, at the same time, there’s a huge number of people being aligned into similar matrices like processions but to be exhibited in military parades and political races. The script of political performance bridges the public and the private, the visibility of matrix power and the invisibility of pixelated and fragmentary individuality.
In this science-fictional and chaotic year of 2020, there are quite a few scenarios to demonstrate the unremarkable sacrifice made by individuals among the huge collectivities in many culture contexts. One of my motivations is encouraging players to feel empathy and to provide a community for those pixelated individuals we have ignored.
Mass performance is a form of performing art and gymnastics, in which large numbers of performers take part in a highly regimented performance that emphasizes group dynamics rather than individual prowess. It's one of the simplest forms of massive collective actions, which directs the arrayed crowd into patterned matrices with a sense of geometrical beauty and utopianism, exhibits delicate duality. As individuals, how do we look back on our existence among collectivities while being buried in neat patterns? As social animals, how do we face our primitive calling of collective-seeking fearlessly without hostility?
I'm trying to find the answer by making this experimental game The Radiant City, a vast and mysterious space built for the invisible individuals streaming in the tide of collectivism.
Performers, soldiers, nurses, policemen, and any other collections of people, with the same or different ethnic backgrounds, genders, professions, beliefs and personalities, are possibly being managed into these human arrays in political performances. This is not rare to see in some societies. In contrast, when we go hand in hand in a parade to protest for our liberty of human rights, at the same time, there’s a huge number of people being aligned into similar matrices like processions but to be exhibited in military parades and political races. The script of political performance bridges the public and the private, the visibility of matrix power and the invisibility of pixelated and fragmentary individuality.
In this science-fictional and chaotic year of 2020, there are quite a few scenarios to demonstrate the unremarkable sacrifice made by individuals among the huge collectivities in many culture contexts. One of my motivations is encouraging players to feel empathy and to provide a community for those pixelated individuals we have ignored.
Mass performance is a form of performing art and gymnastics, in which large numbers of performers take part in a highly regimented performance that emphasizes group dynamics rather than individual prowess. It's one of the simplest forms of massive collective actions, which directs the arrayed crowd into patterned matrices with a sense of geometrical beauty and utopianism, exhibits delicate duality. As individuals, how do we look back on our existence among collectivities while being buried in neat patterns? As social animals, how do we face our primitive calling of collective-seeking fearlessly without hostility?
I'm trying to find the answer by making this experimental game The Radiant City, a vast and mysterious space built for the invisible individuals streaming in the tide of collectivism.
The Radiant City - Gameplay
The whole game is about player's observation of performers. There are two types of performers through the game. One is sharp visual style character with irregular body movements, non-unified emotions and personal voices, and another is pixelated character which always keeps still, disciplinary and silent. The prototypes of these characters all come from social media footages. They are all someone real but unknown.
The game begins in the center of a mysterious city in which yelling of mass performance crowds comes from all directions. The player will start the journey at the entrance of the stadium, being the only audience for a massive gymnastic show. After collecting your ticket at the box office, the player will explore the playground around, getting close to staffs and rehearsing performers to collect their personal fragments. Individual fragments are inventories that can be collected through the whole game includes performers' intimate belongings, their voice and their audio diaries etc. These fragments collection provide a path to get closer to the invisible performers as well as their unique personalities and emotions.
When the player find their seat on the podium, the show begins. The player will watch this “thousands performers for one audience” show at a leader view, and the player can control the movement of crowds by simply clicking a few keys. Directing a mass performance is just like this, people move in regular direction and distance under the leaders’ order, making huge waves by body movement and using body poses to spell out giant text. Along with the show music getting weaker and weaker, the game canvas will drop into another perspective, to start the next journey.
Then, the player will come to a performer’s perspective, being buried in arrays and the whole performance start to become chaotic. There is no clear path or route to take, no clear voices to hear, no single goal to achieve, the actions of the player will reflect back upon them and the performer crowds around, transforming and changing them both. The player may turn up the volume of some individual whispering between performers by walking pass by slowly and hearing their voices and stories.
Email me for a downloadable link if you want to play the game.
The game begins in the center of a mysterious city in which yelling of mass performance crowds comes from all directions. The player will start the journey at the entrance of the stadium, being the only audience for a massive gymnastic show. After collecting your ticket at the box office, the player will explore the playground around, getting close to staffs and rehearsing performers to collect their personal fragments. Individual fragments are inventories that can be collected through the whole game includes performers' intimate belongings, their voice and their audio diaries etc. These fragments collection provide a path to get closer to the invisible performers as well as their unique personalities and emotions.
When the player find their seat on the podium, the show begins. The player will watch this “thousands performers for one audience” show at a leader view, and the player can control the movement of crowds by simply clicking a few keys. Directing a mass performance is just like this, people move in regular direction and distance under the leaders’ order, making huge waves by body movement and using body poses to spell out giant text. Along with the show music getting weaker and weaker, the game canvas will drop into another perspective, to start the next journey.
Then, the player will come to a performer’s perspective, being buried in arrays and the whole performance start to become chaotic. There is no clear path or route to take, no clear voices to hear, no single goal to achieve, the actions of the player will reflect back upon them and the performer crowds around, transforming and changing them both. The player may turn up the volume of some individual whispering between performers by walking pass by slowly and hearing their voices and stories.
Email me for a downloadable link if you want to play the game.
Game scene: the box office
Game scene: the playground
Game characters: the performers
Game UI: fragments collection
Game scene: directing the show
Game scene: diving into the matrix
Medium:
Experimental Game / Video / SoundIn Collaboration with:
Other projects I've been working on since last year.
Race For the Arctic: Short Gameplay
Race for the Arctic is an experimental game in which players race as freight-shipping companies to deliver their cargo across the arctic. Throughout the course of each lap, players experience the impact of climate change in the region as the game’s narrative travels in fast-motion towards the end of this century. These future scenarios have been modeled on data from academic literature as well as predictions gathered in research workshops with experts as diverse as a geo-political expert, environmental scientists, shipping CEO, arctic tour guide, and a climate activist. And for those who play it, we hope that Race for the Arctic will provide a renewed sense of urgency and reality to the climate challenge we face together.
My role in the project: Art Director / 3D Artist
My role in the project: Art Director / 3D Artist
Medium:
Video Game / Docu-game / SoundIn Collaboration with:
Producer / Researcher
Producer / Researcher
Art Director / 3D Artist
Art Director / 3D Artist
Composer / Sound Designer
The Village - VR short play through
In the summer of 2019, I participated in this collaborative VR experience project for V&A Museum of Childhood, which was exhibited and presented in V&A Museum of Childhood Festival of Play.
The whole project addresses some of the challenges we face when it comes to supporting play in the modern world. This VR experience inspired by a collection of doll-houses in V&A Museum of Childhood and aimed to transform this doll-village into a VR experience for young kids to explore narratives and stories behind the artwork.
My role in this project: 3D Artist
The whole project addresses some of the challenges we face when it comes to supporting play in the modern world. This VR experience inspired by a collection of doll-houses in V&A Museum of Childhood and aimed to transform this doll-village into a VR experience for young kids to explore narratives and stories behind the artwork.
My role in this project: 3D Artist
Medium:
VR Experience / HTC VIVEIn Collaboration with:
3D Artist
Researchers / Script Writer
Composer
Character Artist
Researcher