Xingeng Wu
About
Xingeng Wu is a cross-media visual designer and interaction designer from Inner Mongolia, China, who graduated from the Design for Art Direction BA(Hons) course at the UAL London College of Communication. Now studying the MA in Information Experiment Design at the Royal College of Art.
His postgraduate work constantly urges him to shape his way of thinking and broaden his understanding of ways of visual communication. He is inspired to explore various media perspectives and think about dialogues across disciplines about visual culture in today’s society.
His current creative interests focus on the Anthropocene, post-human, and ecological discourses, exploring the overlapping narratives between nature, technology, and humans through interactive experiences.
Statement
With the development of meteorological engineering technology, the sky has become a new battlefield intertwined with politics, capital, and technology. Geoengineering, funded by powerful Technology corporations, like Microsoft, claims to "save the planet," while sidestepping different causes and consequences of climate collapse, and ignoring unresolved issues such as social asymmetries, racial and class inequalities.
‘Lurking Behind the Wind’ is a multi-media installation that reflects on the ambitions of a "climate-controlled environment" derived from neoliberal values by comparing the development of contemporary geoengineering technologies to a “monster” that grows arbitrarily through technocracy.
The project collects a series of visual reports of natural disasters, human disputes, and social oppression from the Global South, Eurasia, and North America as well as excerpts of scientists and entrepreneurs advocating geoengineering.
Together they recreate a post-nature, fictional, anti-tech utopian narrative. The project attempt to encourage the audience to think about issues of future environmental justice and reflect on the potential threats contained in the worship of technology in the context of today's socio-political and economic landscape.
Lurking Behind The Wind
‘Lurking Behind the Wind’ is a multi-media installation that reflects on the ambitions of a "climate-controlled environment" derived from neoliberal values by comparing the development of contemporary geoengineering technologies to a “monster” that grows arbitrarily through technocracy. The installation is divided into three parts, Monster infested weather map/ archived video collage and a physical installation.
Medium: Mixed Medium
Size: 60×60×150CM
Video Collages
In the second part, I build an algorithm that collects a series of visual reports of natural disasters, human disputes, and social oppression from the Global South, Eurasia, and North America as well as excerpts of scientists and entrepreneurs advocating geoengineering.
Together they create a contrasting narrative indicating the underlying problem with such technology, as well as the false future promoted by corporations. The collages are generated by code, every time it runs is a new set of narratives.
Medium: Archieved Videos
Sounding Balloon Installation
The third part incorporates a sounding balloon installation. A Sounding balloon is an indispensable tool in the process of atmospheric detection and atmospheric experiments. As a vehicle for climate engineering experiments, it not only inherits the ambition of human beings to conquer nature but also forms part of the technological utopian monster. I used this medium to build this self-inflating and deflating device to map the unreliability and potential dangers of atmospheric engineering
Medium: Mixed Medium
Size: 60×60×150CM