PrionFeb-Jun 2025
Arduino-controlled interactive mechanical installation, UE5 interactive open world game, two-channel live video display
Materials:
- PLA 3D printed parts: finger joint hinges, key caps, keyboard brackets, nipple button supportive structure
- wood installation: 1/2” plywood, 2” diameter wood dowels, 6mm diameter magnetic chips, wood glue, acrylic board
- life cast silicon parts: Dragon Skin FX, Silc Pig (various colors), flocking (various colors)
- Arduino part: Arduino Uno, MS24 (4), PCA 9685
- finger pulling system: turnbuckles, Kevlar Cord, wood dowels, fisheye hooks
- game: hot switchable keyboard, LG high-res monitor, PC (Nvidia 4090 GPU), prison TV, HDMI cables, track pad (or wireless mouse as alternative)
- miscellaneous: small wood folding table, power strip, pedestal
Main body dimensions (L x W x H): 36 x 20 x 67 in
Prion is inspired by years of hiking and uncanny encounters with deer (which seemed to look back with awareness) and referencing on the illness named Chronic Wasting Disease (“Zombie Deer Disease”).
The project is an exploration of
autonomy, Otherness, the Uncategorizables, the construction of Home and Self, and the notions of Transparent Machines and Hollowed Bodies.
Fragmentation, Reconstruction: An Alternative View on Self and Home
The discussion of the “mirror stage” and the concept of the imago in Lacan’s The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function inspires me to view the self as an artificial construct rather than a stable entity that exists from the beginning of one’s life. Although seemingly contradictory, it is through stepping away from one’s own body and observing it from the “mirror” (physical or abstract) that one forms the continuous narrative of the story of “I.”
As for the concept of home, I find it a magical notion shaped by chance and psychological attachment. Similar to the construction of the self, home—or homes—can be seen as anchor points along one’s life journey, so that a person does not feel endlessly lost, wandering from one location to another. (In the same way, lived experience without the narration of self is simply a collection of sensory inputs.)
Thus, I frame both self and home as artificial, narrative, fluid, and potentially illusory if mistaken for reality—or for the entirety of the world. (This will be further discussed in innenwelt, umwelt, and beyond.)
Transparent Machines, Hollowed Bodies
The modern computer (and AI, as the new prevalent technology) and the human body can both be seen as “black boxes” to most of the population. Rationally, people know they are structurally constructed and consist of simple logical units following the laws of physics, but emotionally they are closer to magic: we forget the code and mechanisms behind the shell (or skin) and sense them instead as will, spirit, intelligence, or consciousness.
Thus, I think subconsciously our mental images of computers or humans are, in fact, hollowed. Or more precisely, hollowed with a void that can be filled with many different concepts such as soul, consciousness, or rule. The simulation of characters in 3D game engines, no matter how hyper-realistic, are geometric shells animated with invisible rigging skeletons and prewritten (sometimes AI-enhanced) logical code. It is the behaviors and interactions that make a simulation “real”—turning those conscious or intelligent beings into hollows. On the other hand, we are well aware of the danger and naivety of this illusion: loss of power source, physical destruction, virus, cancer… Anything that breaks the inner structures of these “hollowed” bodies reminds us of the physical nature of the things before us. Yet I don’t think the concept of hollowed bodies is then abandoned or replaced—it is extracted as an abstract symbol from its physical part: the transparent machines.
Unlike the hollowed bodies, the transparent machines appear more confusing and even frightening. They are like answers to riddles already written but in an unknown language, whose intention we cannot grasp. They are passive, difficult to describe, since they do not belong to the world of 2D visual impressions. In fact, they straddle between umwelts, with parts always inaccessible to any one of them. In a way, we create hollowed bodies to describe and understand the façades of transparent machines, but sometimes we become too carried away by the hollowed bodies.