2019

Monster Outside the Windows | Text, Installation, 3D Rendered Moving Image，3D Print | 6×5×3.2m | 2019 | Image source, Koganecho Bazzar

Cao's interest is in computer errors. "Errors" appear when a process is interrupted or stopped due to a programme judged to be running abnormally. Although this usually signifies a "failure", it also reflects the line between normality/abnormality in human society. Using this perspective, Cao interprets the bugs not as irritations, but as messages from spiritual beings inside the machine; from "Yaorozu no kami" (8 million gods of Shinto), quoting the Japanese view of nature where not only rocks and trees, but also phenomena such as disasters and healing are spiritual things.

The mischief of a bug in the data rendering a deformed body of a frog, mouse and crocdile, despite perfect programming. A bug's poem of free-translated text appearing as an error in an unexpected shutdown or restart*. Emitting these lines in a variety of voices, the figure of an old man with a distorted skeleton. A bug's dream visualised, as though data inhaled during the day is then released in sleep, of 3D rendered images of signs floating through a town at night. These pieces create a space in which we are faced with monsters (errors) outside the “windows” that indicate the screens of an application and show normal computer operations.

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《窗外的鬼怪》| 文本，装置，3D数字模拟影像，3D打印 | 尺寸：6×5×3.2m | 2019 | 图片来源，横滨黄金町艺术节

作者将以前进行动画工作期间出现bug的3D角色们打印出来，放在蓝色幕布表面，幕布上面印着的是计算机出现问题时的蓝屏文字，这个“错误的窗”，是windows视窗的提示。计算机内存英文叫做memory，记忆。计算机蓝屏的出现，类比人类是记忆的短暂休克。不断出现bug的动画角色，一直重复着计算机蓝屏提示的日语念白。抽搐扭曲的鳄鱼，从被作者奴役为一个动画角色的命运中解脱了，是数字生命的成佛仪式。这团扭曲的东西更像是一个墓碑，见证着一个不可知的神秘数字生命的消逝。计算机蓝屏的蓝也是电影工业里蓝幕的蓝，让物被抛离出本属于它自己的生存语境的，一种去掉背景的技术。作品是横滨BAZZAR艺术节的委托创作。