Sian Fan – Works: Downtime/Spirit Corp/Conduit

We are delighted to present 3 of Sian Fan’s works as part of our Mercury Online Festival, below. Please watch and interact with these works in full screen mode and with your sound turned on.

Sian Fan is an interdisciplinary artist working in London. She is currently studying a Fine Art Masters at Central Saint Martins, where she has been awarded the prestigious Mona Hatoum Scholarship and has been nominated for the Nova Award. Her work combines movement, the female body and technology to explore embodiment, spirituality and human experience in the digital age.

Spirit Corp

A dark exploration into humanity’s fixation with the digital: in a possible future a human finds herself re-rendered into cyberspace, recoded into a virtual being. As she begins to explore her new form it dissolves and swells into a dark, inky fluid. Struggling against the liquid she momentarily emerges, her body merged into a flower, before being pulled back into the inky depths. As her digital shell and her human consciousness prove incompatible, she finds herself trapped between two diametric states.

As seen on BB4’s ‘Get Animated’.

Conduit Online

Conduit Online Edition is a live streamed Digital Performance incorporating motion capture with live movement that was reconfigured to fit an online format in response to Covid-19 lockdown. The physical body is represented via a webcam feed, placed side by side with the virtual avatar and broadcast via a YouTube live stream. This alternate configuration of the work meditates on the limitations and differences between virtual and physical bodies, particularly in light of our new sensitivity to the fallible nature of the physical body. It explores the differing capabilities of each form, as well our entangled and complex connections to our virtual avatars and to technology as a whole.

Downtime

A quiet spot in hyperspace to take some time out.

Viewing Instructions: Downtime is made for playing on laptop or pc only. Downtime does not work on Safari, for the best experience please use alternative browsers such as Chrome. Please turn your sound on.

Use your arrow keys to move, mouse to look around, space bar to jump. Refresh page to restart.

You can also experience downtime on via Sian Fan’s website, which may work better for some browsers.

As a counter to the hyper-productivity of the post-internet world, ‘Downtime’ virtually embodies the experience of ASMR into a interactive Realtime environment. Simulating a tranquil digital landscape, filled with calming digital artefacts, the user navigates via their computer arrow keys to explore the aimless world and discover aural sensations. The viewer is immersed in a lush landscape of sculpted pink sand dunes, that stretch as far as the eye can see. As they explore the space, they will discover various digital forms that each emit a unique ASMR inspired sound effect.

Downtime acts as a virtual sanctuary, stripping out the endless windows, ads and notifications to create a virtual space to unwind and to disconnect.

Downtime was commissioned by Phoenix Leicester.

Instagram: @sianfan
Twitter: @sianfan
Facebook: iamsianfan 

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