Congratulations to the successful MFA show April 7-10
Jiayi Wang
2018 MFA Thesis
Exhibition
Electronic Integrated Arts
Electronic Integrated Arts
“Making the invisible visible” is the major theme that I wanted to convey by my works during the graduate student period. For me, I prefer to know and perceive one thing by vision, hearing or touch rather than some windy and abstract concepts. For example, time, data transfer and the process of the forming of thoughts in our minds, are all abstract which cannot be heard, seen or touched. However, if I claim that one or some species on the earth or in the universe can perceive the “real entity” of the processes above, it is also credible.
Everything involved with “change” is tangible. In the past, “tangible” and “intangible” are used to refer to entities from the perspective of eye vision. According to the modern opinions, what cannot be captured by our naked eyes may not be called as “intangible” philosophically.
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| Interactive brain wave installation in the Immersive Gallery |
In other words, from the perspective of philosophy, the “invisible” may not be “intangible”. In short, as for change, there is only the distinction between “visible” and “invisible” rather than between “tangible” and “intangible”. In addition, the world entities are divided into two types: one type refers to the tangible entity with speed lower than the light speed or detected entities; the other type refers to the intangible entities with speed faster than the light speed, such as ether. Thus, the passing of time and information transfer are invisible, which need some mediums. The invisible world can be recognized by people in the visible world. This is dialectics.
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| Prof. John Gill appreciating the video on flat screen |
“Making the invisible visible” means a lot for me. For example, if someone was shocked, he would sweat, heartbeat would become faster and pupil would enlarge, which are all external phenomena that can be seen by people, but what happened to this person's internal world? What will happen to his brain? I am curious about these. In terms of time, the passing of time is visible but only through various watches which are a kind of tool to meet the demands of human beings who are the advanced animals, but many phenomena are the visible expression, including sunrise and sunset, the change of the four seasons and the change of shadows, etc.
In my works, shadows, ices and brain waves are three mediums of expression.
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| Jiayi in thesis defense with professors |
Photos by Jiayi Wang/ Aodi Liang
