Wenran Zhao

interdisciplinary artist, programmer, embroiderer and weaver.

Based in Rhode Island, b. 2000

¡wénrán zhào! looks at the ever-evolving technology – touch screens, XR, Artificial Intelligence, and many more–in an anachronistic way. Her works augment tactile objects with custom software, exploring the textures of technology and reinterpreting semiotics in the context of interactive interfaces and sensorial experiences. She will obtain her MFA degree from Rhode Island School of Design in the summer of 2024.

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ARTWORKS

    • CABINET OF ARTIFICIAL MEMORIES

      In colaboration with Seung Ho Jeon

      Various objects presented in a cabinet:
      Video displayed on a CRT TV, a series of 4 flipbooks, a view-master and 3 custom reels, a self-published dictionary of acrostics.
      31.75’’ x 20.5’’ x 27.75’’
      Jan. 2024

    • Cabinet of Artificial Memories is an experiment in which digital artifacts bleed into the physical world through various media: flipbooks and animation created with a self-trained AI model, view-master and reels of fantastical photos, and a dictionary composed of GPT-generated acrostic poems. Each piece represents a significant technological revolution: from traditional print media to the Victorian era invention of stereoscopy, from the modern popularization of cathode ray tube TVs to the state-of-art Generative AI. These vessels hold contents generated by Artificial Intelligence under the artists’ manipulation, presented in a hand-crafted cabinet, weaving the history of technology within the aesthetics of nostalgia and romanticism. What is the algorithm: a tool for society’s advancement, an adversary to human endeavor, a threat to societal equality, or an escape from the physical world? Hasn’t it always been the pursuit of humanity to venture into the unexplored territories that technology has unveiled? When output from AI is of high enough fidelity, who decides if it's art or not? This series of works strive to capture the modernity of our technologically oriented society and invites the audience to explore the implications of a physical and virtual presence.

    • THREAD IN THE AIR

      Spring. 2024

      Embroidery and block prints on linen, beads, conductive threads, microcontrollers, projector, cotton clothesline.
      35’’ x 24’’

      Thread in the Air is a set of two piece of electronic textile works incorporating dynamic projections on textiles. In the digital world projected on a physical tactile surface, words emulate the structure and movements of threads and cloth–they would sway, fold, or tear–responding to the audience’s touch. “To weave is to speak,” the identical etymology of "textile" and "text" in ancient languages seems to remind us of the intertwined relationship between the two notions. In the moment of being touched, narratives are experienced in a non-linear way, text and textiles merging into an integrity. Threads in the Air is an embodiment of how threads and fabrics shape words, thoughts, and narratives.

    • 5537-0537: THE TELEPHONE PIECE

      May 2023
      1960s Rotary Dial Telephone, Arduino & electronics, Bespoke software
      7” x 9.8” x 4.5”

      5537-0537 is a special sequence of numbers for me, the artist, but essentially it is a phone number, and the title of this work. Picking up the receiver, the audience can dial an arbitrary 8-digit number. Then, the functioning phone gradually guides the audience into a state of chaos, noise, and feedback within the lines. As a new number is dialed, the signal will be disrupted by noise, transitioning the soundscape into a distinct state that corresponds to the dialed number.

    • The fascination with Cybernetics instills in us a belief that the world operates as a complex interconnection of nodes, and such a system is controlled through the exchange of information and feedback among the nodes. The telephone, as a primitive yet truly remarkable device, made the world become an intricate network operating within and between societies in which information is exchanged. Third-order cybernetics locates “both the observer and the system within complex, networked, adaptive, and coevolving environments through which information and data are pervasively flowing, a move catalyzed by the rapid development of ubiquitous technologies and mixed reality systems.” But 5537-0537 is not about control–rather, it’s about losing control. Cybernetics quantifies information content and therefore acknowledges the role of entropy, a measure of system disorder or randomness, in relation with the flow of information transmitted within and between systems. Regardless of the number the audience has dialed, the occurrence of noise–the very primitive shapes of sound–will flow in as turbulence, encompassing cycles, noises, utterances, and melodies.

      The speech used in the piece was generated from an AI cloned voice of Jane Barbe, the "Time Lady" whose recordings for phone companies were listened to by millions of households over the past century. But the AI model also captured the textures of those recordings: bands, filters, subtle noises, and different phone qualities, resulting in non-exhaustive variations of one person’s voice. In this piece, Barbe’s voice is not just telling us emotionlessly that the number we’ve dialed is not available, but talking about discourses such as consciousness, artificial intelligence, technology, and freedom. Yet her words are broken and fragmented: the succeeding sentence seems loosely related to the preceding one, while sometimes it seems not; Are the relationships only in our heads? Is that so?

    • Noise is the product of a system with a great number of uncertain, possible states. Machine learning model training starts from a noisy initial state, and meaningful patterns or structures are captured, compressed, high-dimensional data represented in lower dimensions, in other words, a latent space. Any presence of random fluctuations in the system leads to a possible destination. From the noise we see an infinite number of parallel futures.

    • CLOTH ON CLOTH (ES)

      Spring. 2023

      Interactive projection on mended old clothes, conductive threads, Adafruit Flora, Washing Line
      40'' x 23''

    • Cloth on Cloth(es) is an interactive e-textile piece incorporating projection onto a mended linen garment. This work is part of a long-term research project exploring interactivity in electronic textiles. Fabric scraps gathered from second-hand clothes, mended and stitched with pieces of conductive cloth by conductive threads, become tactile interfaces where audiences can interact with a visual prose poem projected on it. The prose, narrating the emotional undertones linked to repair-work, visually emulates the movements of a piece of fabric as the projected words sway, are folded or torn, all in response to the viewer's touch. Driven by custom software, the words form a kind of “digital fabric”.


      Cloth on Cloth(es) sits at the crossover of times: it recalls the exquisite textile craftsmanship predating the momentum of the Industrial Revolution, exploring the duality of fabrics in both digital and physical reality. As a pre-capitalist craft, repairing old clothes connotes love and care from the person who mends them--usually a mom, a wife, or an elder sister--to the one who wears them. Throughout history, textiles have shared comparable silent roles as women; yet, women’s wisdom, experiences and emotions are stitched into patchworks, portraying textiles as a medium for memories. The visual aesthetics of Cloth on Cloth(es) also draws inspiration from the Chinese Baijiayi and the Korean Bojagi traditions, both of which are patchwork textiles known for their balanced use of colors, delicate collages, and the implied blessings of the textiles. 

    • BORDERLINE TRAVESTY

      Jul. 2022

      Keywords: Generative Art

      To the Animation

    • Using a generative algorithm—namely, the “vehicle system”—as brush strokes, Borderline Travesty evolves over time to produce a fluid, never-repeating artwork that meditates on the traffic across the US-Mexico border.

      By sequentially encoding multiple “motors” and “sensors” in virtual vehicles, we acquire a moving agent that reacts to its environment and finally behaves in a way that is complicated, flexible and adaptive, and even appear to be intelligent. Hundreds of these vehicles are populated in Borderline Travesty, and they depart from a line in the shape of the US-Mexico border, moving forward to their destinations but being attracted or repelled by the adjacent landscapes (major immigration cities) on their ways. Their trajectories are thus rendered through time.

      While the logic behind the vehicle system is purely mechanical, their movements become somewhat self-organized, cognitive, and intelligent. Echoing back to the immigration and transports through the border, the vehicles’ curvy trajectories remind us of the swings and roundabouts—in the scale of life!—that travelers have to go through.  

      Among so many routes, were you also one of the vehicles traveling back and forth?
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    Collaboration