Endless"Jue Ju"

绝句

Jueju * RISD independent Study, Winter Session

Documentation video_2010.1

Endless is an interactive digital media installation presented on five monitors that act as a sort of storyboard. On each monitor, we see animated images drawn from a famous Chinese collection of prints known as the Ch’eng-Shih Mo-Yuan. The images depict skeletons, monks, elephants, and other figures in harmony with nature. As the images proceed on a three-minute loop, dust begins to fall from the sky in the scene. The dust is prompted by laser sensors; the more viewers enter the space, the more the dust falls, eventually covering the figures. When enough people enter the space (about one hundred), the figures shake off the dust, and the cycle begins again.

The five-screen format of this work is inspired by an ancient form of Chinese poetry called jue ju. Jue ju poems were used to describe scenery and they had to be written in only five words. Jue ju has a second, related meaning: it suggests that scenery must never be repeated; it is endless and ever-changing. Endless questions the assumption that nature will always adapt to the effects of human presence; nature is not endless if people take it for granted. As governments around the world continue to put their GDP ahead of their environmental policies, we risk everything. As the figures in Endless are covered in dust, which appears so placid, they are metaphorically succumbing to damage and pollution. But they shake it off and begin again.