Experimental Communication
Ping Mu
Ping Mu (China, 1994) is a new media artist and graphic designer, currently working and living in Shanghai.
Education:
2013-2017, Packaging and Communication Design, Shanghai Institute of Visual Art, BA
2018-2020, Experimental Communication, Royal College of Art, MA
Exhibitions:
2020 New Genres Performance Lecture: X+Y=Z, The Rotunda, London
2020 RCA Work in Progress: The Studio, Unit 5 Mediaworks, London
2019 Design Without: Command Control Communicate, Walmer Yard, London
2017 Graduate Design Exhibition ‘Tale of searching for the root’, Xintiandi, Shanghai
2017 ‘LUXE PACK SHANGHAI’ Luxury Packaging Exhibition, Exhibition Center, Shanghai
2016 Romania International Design Week, Romania
2016 ‘The Tale of Two Cities’Design Exhibition, Shanghai & London
2016 ‘Tradition in Globalization’ Design Exhibition, Vienna
2015 ‘In Mirror’ Chinese Packaging Design Exhibition, Klingspor Museum, German
2015 ‘Mind Matrix’ Design Exhibition, SIVA, Shanghai
Recipient of The Chris Garnham Prize
I am a new media artist and graphic designer, currently working and living in Shanghai. My art practice is broadly connected to the information era and the online space I live within. I am interested in exploring a sense of transition in time scale and the invasion of technology into life and it impacts our social systems, production structures, emotional relationships and ethics. I hope to critique our social realities by combining satire, dark humour and speculative fantasy, encouraging the audience to question the existing structures of the world.
C 301 Cyberspace Odyssey
C 301
Our modern apartments with glowing screens, LED lights, electromagnetic noise and constant flow of information have replaced nature. I try to achieve a certain degree of cognitive alienation through the virtual reconstruction of modern people's living state. I 3D scanned my apartment and rebuilt a virtual version of my habitat. I used two-dimensional lines to describe this second nature, stripping all weight, texture, colour and perception to represent that our life and emotions are engulfed by these two-dimensional simulacra. I then projected my behaviour onto an ape. She wanders in a mixed space of reality, dreams and cyberspace. She is sometimes anxious, sometimes lonely, sometimes angry, like a trapped animal under house arrest in a modern prison.
Medium:
AnimationSize:
05’45’’
Entertainment Factory
Human Playing
Human Playing links to players’ social media accounts and generates virtual products from images they have uploaded. The sound design refers to Henry Lefebvre's rhythm analysis theory, using sound samples recorded in a factory to represent an invasion of modernity rhythm. Players need to click with the rhythm to imitate the power relationship between assembly lines and workers. This labour to produce these virtual products eventually generates a data creature—Human Playing. We are producing and quantifying ourselves.