In my project bug square, I used game engine to create a digital world that have many biological bugs (insects). And I use the aesthetics of computer bugs, glitches to construct the visual effects and environment. The sounds of the project is based on my daily feelings of bugs. In the project development process, I think a lot about balance, at the beginning was the balance between biological bugs and computer bugs, and later I need to balance my own feelings in the project. At the beginning, I was not thinking about symbiotic or the ecosystem. It’s more of the exploration of the term “bug”. And while I am making the world, and think about all the elements of this project, I feel I am explore “symbiosis”, I try to explore how digital systems and biological systems coexist in the same space, and how people might be affect by it.
You can view a working in progress video here:
https://youtu.be/cdKfyYYlal0My decision to make my master thesis on computer and biological bugs started in the summer of 2020. While I was isolated in New York working on computer projects, my roommates asked me to go upstairs to deal with some actual biological bugs. Since then, I want to make a project for them both to live. I have many stories about each of them. I recorded those feelings with bio-sensors and I used them to build some visuals of the virtual world. At both the graduate and undergraduate levels, a lot of my works were about capture, and now, at this time, I am still trying to create and capture bugs. But for the mechanism I built in the program, I will never capture them with my virtual hand. In my thesis development process, I have come to believe that both computer bugs and biological bugs have the right to stay. For us as humans, it’s okay to make human errors, and we should be less human-centered with the planet we are living in. I hope the viewers create their own narratives after watching the simulation. In the end, we should all go out and enjoy everything we have.
The process of making of this project is critical making. From the concept to have the finished artwork, it's a lot of experiment, failures. Like I mentioned before, it about learning from the process, and think out of the human side. Have a world build by the bugs, and have the work for the bugs. When I had this concept, I think too much, but it's not about the thinking, in the end, it's about how I can make it.
