The title refers to a famous Chinese fable which is about a man named Yu Gong moves a mountain. However, the artwork title differs slightly from the original fable’s title, (changing the syntax) allowing it to be read as “a moving man fools the mountain”.
Body measurement as a traditional land surveying technique has become an out-dated approach with the development of satellite technology and the digital revolution, however, it explores more potential of spaces. To meet the mechanical production purpose, new user communities (with the rise of sensors, smart cars, drones, sweeping robots, cloud computing, etc.) contribute to a new geographical topology organization which does not include body measurement. The work aims to create the topology modelling of a mountain by walking with a self-made device as a prosthesis. Each step creates a continuous point in a new virtual space which includes the data of altitude, latitude, longitude, and time. Based on the collected data, the mountain was reproduced in virtual space by using computer graphics methods.
(Born 1997 in Ningbo, China) Chen Xin is a Hangzhou-based media artist and computer graphic researcher. His works focus on the theme of machine intelligence and Animism in the context of pervasive computing theory, Contingency and Variation from autonomous systems, and Recursion under the influence of cybernetics. Through investigating electronic biological models such as Slime Mould Simulation(SMA), Cellular Automata(CA), Particle Swarm Optimization(PSO), Chen explores the potential of computer vision in the aspect of organic and self-feedback. He works with audio-visual live performance, computer graphic, installation with sound and screen.Awarded the ‘Academic Award’ at the 2nd Lianjing Future Media Academy Award in 2023.
