Xiangjin Chen

Xiangjin Chen is a Chinese artist based in London and Beijing, studying at the Royal college of art in the MA Information Experience Design. She graduated previously from China Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing. Her work concentrates on the relationship between humans, nature, and the future. Under the different cultural and educational backgrounds of the east and the west, she has formed a unique cultural perspective and can think dialectically about problems from different aspects.

She also works as a user experience designer, devoting herself to the design of highly accessible human-computer interaction systems and better interactive experiences.

The world we currently live in is very different to the one previous generations experienced, species have been lost forever and ecosystems have been destroyed by human activity, however we’re not capable of perceiving it. Each generation sets its mental benchmark of normality by how the world looked when first encountered. The difference in intergenerational perceptions is a phenomenon known as environmental amnesia. Memory Ghost is an artistic project that explores environmental amnesia in the context of sea corals.

Artist Xiangjin Chen uses artificial intelligence to analyze and generate fictional corals, measure concentration and predict people's memory bleaching degree of corals through brain wave equipment, then show this dynamic process in an experimental film. She attempts to use this method to construct people’s own memory ghosts from the temporal dimension and perceptual experience of the past.

The project aims to design a multimedia interactive experience installation to remind the audience that environmental amnesia is working on us and also the natural coral environment. At the same time, she hopes to communicate with the audience by forming their short-term memory through the combined effect of film and interactive installation, so as to awaken the thinking of longterm environmental amnesia in the coral environment through this comparison. She believes by informing these can help provide new ideas and perspectives for protecting the coral environment and alleviate the effect of environmental amnesia.

Memory Ghost

Memory Ghost, Film Excerpts

Memory Ghost, Film Excerpts

Polaroid bleaching after 8 times experiments and over 50 hours ice melting

Sound design, collaboration with Yueshen Wu

The film links environmental amnesia, coral degradation and memory loss through visual expression, sound design, narration and subtitles. The film mainly uses metaphors to inform the audience of the reasons for the deterioration of the coral environment and people's long-term neglect.

Director: Xiangjin Chen & Bai

Camera: Xiangjin Chen & Bai

Editor: Bai

Sound Design: Yueshen Wu

Voice Over: Zihao Lu

In Collaboration with:

Collaboration with filmmaker, Shuobo Bai

Sound design by Yueshen Wu

Medium:

Moving Image

Size:

00:03:20

Fictional corals by concentration – In the perception of personal environmental amnesia, I used the concentration test to reflect the short-term memory of the coral environment when the audience watched the film. It can be reflected intuitively by generating a visual fictional coral in real time.

Data collection from time scale and wide collection – I create the artificial fictional coral using AI. I collected dataset from both time scale and wide collection.

AI generated outcomes using pictures, prompt and coding(partial) – There are all full of dynamic and showed a particle system.

Coral model made by touch designer – "Memory Ghost - This is a fictional coral memory image generated based on your concentration.”The degree of attention of the audience determines how blurred the fictional coral is.

Technical support

Collective memory ghost – In terms of perception of collective environmental amnesia, I use posters to show other people's memory ghost images result (authorized). By comparing other people's environmental amnesia states, the audience connected individuals with the collective and formed a collective environmental amnesia perception of the coral environment.

Concentration standard – The more information in the short-term memory formed by concentration, audience will get the clearer coral . The less information you have when you're distracted, the more blurry becomes. By comparing it with the standard amnesia coral poster provided to locate their memory state.

Brochure

Interactive Installation - Memory Ghost, Mixed Media

The project aims to design a multimedia interactive experience installation to remind the audience that environmental amnesia is working on us and also the natural coral environment. At the same time, I hope to communicate with the audience by forming their short-term memory through the combined effect of film and interactive installation, so as to awaken the thinking of long-term environmental amnesia in the coral environment through this comparison. I believe by informing these can help provide new ideas and perspectives for protecting the coral environment and alleviate the effect of environmental amnesia.