record

Thesis Info

LABS ID
00872
Thesis Title
Fluid Equilibrium : ​sensing with biophotonic field through technoetic performance
Author
Yishuai Zhang
2nd Author
3rd Author
Degree
MFA Computational Arts
Year
April 2020
Number of Pages
9
University
Goldsmiths University
Thesis Supervisor
Helen Pritchard
Supervisor e-mail
h.pritchard AT gold.ac.uk
Other Supervisor(s)
Language(s) of Thesis
English
Department / Discipline
Computing department
Languages Familiar to Author
Chinese, German
URL where full thesis can be found
zhangyishuai.com/essay1.html
Keywords
computation, performance art, biophysics, biophoton, energy landscape
Abstract: 200-500 words
In 2006, Roy Ascott coined the concept ‘Moistmedia’ — a new media form consists of dry computation and wet biological process[1]. Ascott’s definition led to more open discourses about the possibility of marking out a pathway to metaphysical reality through navigating the consciousness of biophotonic-telematic networks in interdisciplinary projects across art and computation. In Donna Haraway's “A Cyborg Manifesto” she writes ‘ A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction[2].’ The correlation between computational and biological processes has since been unprecedentedly emphasised to demystify the mystery of spirituality. Simultaneously the entanglement between art and science begins to unravel itself through the intangible border between the biophotonic field and telematic field. According to field theory, everything could be perceived as signals — electromagnetic waves within section of spectrum, because of its immanent atomic and electronic structures. Under these circumstances, this essay intends to explore and speculate on the potential of the biophotonic field partially functioning as an information network, and to propose an experimental concept called “fluid equilibrium”— a resonant state in multiple-fields — as a potent perspective to perceive and analyse the multiple-field reality with the help of computation. In order to elaborate the above-mentioned arguments, this essay will be divided into four parts. First, I will define the phrase ‘fluid equilibrium’ and explain its significance in conducting field-theory-based art practice and research. In the second part, corresponding historical review and existing infrastructures of biophotonic field will be presented as supportive materials for the further discussion of the value and applicability of the biophotonic field within fluid equilibrium. In the third part, I will build a graph-based field model based on energy landscape mappings, introducing the framework as a critical computational tool for the study of fluid equilibrium. Besides, a theory-based artefact will be demonstrated to proceed the relative practice. In the last part, I will demonstrate a series of speculative technologies related to field theory and bring up more questions and discussions about the potential development of fluid equilibrium. ​