Ziqin Hou is a Chinese artist and designer currently studying Information Experience Design at the RCA. He has a BA in Fine Art from Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology. In his work, Ziqin uses multiple media including drawing, installation, moving image and live performance, to explore social issues.
Education
Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology | Public Art | 2015 - 2019
Royal College of Art | Information Experience Design | 2020 - 2022
In the process of globalisation, there are an increasing number of floating populations in the world. Social mobility leads to complex forms and representations of identity for these floating populations, particularly in relation to the household registration system (hukou) system in China, which does not capture the presence or location of these populations.
My project offers a new system of representation, using various narratives to aid and enhance connections among experiences for these groups, and invites audiences to rethink the way identities are established beyond the household registration system.
The URBAN NOMADS ARCHIVE is an immersive virtual reality space for urban nomads who are currently living in London. In this experience, the audience can explore and gather compelling objects related to the urban site, and use these to create their own nomadic image, constructing and expressing an identity in the virtual space.
I chose to use Virtual reality as a medium because VR can dissolve real geographical boundaries, and it also can provide a more immersive experience for the audience.
Entering the VR space, the audiences are told that they will build their own Nomadic image in this VR space, and register their urban Nomad identity with this image.
First, the audience appears in Environment A, a virtual London where they can explore and collect objects.
After collecting, the audience can choose to go to environment B, which is a pure white empty space, where the audience can compose a digital installation with the objects they collected, which is their own "nomadic image".
After that, the system saves their nomadic image, uploads it to the archives, and generates a unique Nomad ID for them.
The objects that the audience is going to collect are some of the models that I 3D scanned in London. I've also opened up the platform for people to send me scanned models of London, and I'll put them in VR space. The reason why I chose these 3D scanned objects as the material for the nomadic image is that our identity is formed through constant interaction with the social environment we are in. These scanning models symbolize the events we experience in London, and these interactions will gradually shape our identity.
After collecting objects in environment A, the audience can return to the teleport point next to the starting point to go to Environment B. If environment A is a virtual space based on reality, then environment B is more like a virtual inner space of audiences. Environment B is a pure white empty space, where the audience can build their nomadic image. Because the collected objects are different and the combination forms of objects are different, the images created by the audience will be unique.
When audiences finish the experience of environment B, the system will save the data and generate a Nomad ID based on the nomadic image. IDs have the pattern generated from the nomadic Image shape. Scanning these IDs will generate the model built in the VR.
