Jian Qiao

The artwork

This narrative animation begins with a leak from a urinal in an art gallery that causes a lot of water to flow into the interior of the gallery.When people see the large amount of water flowing into the gallery, they do not see it as a crisis but as a work of art, and two of them discuss whether the water is an artwork.

The theme of this work is to explore an invisible Hegemony* in art, where does it come from and where is it affect? It is a demonstration of the existing art system and a questioning of what we as artists strive for, as well as a questioning of the direction of art.

Many of the elements in the story act as symbols to be explored by the viewer.

*Hegemony：leadership or dominance, especially by one state or social group over others.

Dance of tools

This video is a reflection on the frequent and massive use of tools in modern society.

Nowadays, tools fill our lives, there are tools around us every moment , we are using tools every moment, and our body reinforces this experience of using tools repeatedly.At this point our body’s actions and movement become solidified, we are like a puppet, our body's movement are just a projection of the tool's operational logic, which means that the tool is constantly shaping our movements, Is the emergence of new tools extending the boundaries of our body's existing movements system, so are we controlling the tools or are the tools controlling us?

This work is a dance of tools without any tools appearing, a dance of tools but performed by the human body.Thus review our primitive body, our subconscious, our physiological mechanisms.

Yesterday

That work focuses on the subjective perception of time. How do we perceive and measure the length and speed of time as a person? Subjective time is not as precise as a clock, its standard is variable, what we are doing and what is happening around us greatly affects the time we perceive, just like a day can be very fast or very long.

This work is called Yesterday, I interviewed a lot of people about what they did yesterday from morning to night and presented their day in a textual way, starting and ending at the same time, but moving and happening at a different speed.What I want to express is that everyone feels differently about yesterday's time. It's not about measuring the speed of day in terms of time, but rather the speed of time in terms of what has happened.

DESIGN

Adobe illustration(AI) is the most popular design software in graphic design, and this is the typeface I designed with AI. The position of the pins is actually the position of the anchor points in the typeface I designed with AI. 

When we use AI to design , anchor is the most basic thing, all lines and shapes are formed based on anchor points, all line direction ,variations, are determined by anchor ,This function is accompanied by intelligent calculation, automatic fixing, and becomes the main operation logic of font design，but in same time it fixes all the natural feeling of designer to lines and shapes, intervene too much in our natural intuition and expression on works,That is totally different experience to design on paper.

Nowadays we can see that many typeface designs are becoming more and more similar, and in many works, software style is covering designer style ,because no matter where the designer gets his inspiration, they start his design by creating anchor points, and this is the rule of when we use AI to design typeface , The designer's work should be free, But when they make work by AI, which mean we have to follow the rules of software. I think design tools is controlling and domesticating our design, These nails are not just anchor points, but also a restriction and constraint on the design, which solidifies design.