Jiaqi Shi（Jaki)

Jiaqi Shi is a visual designer and new media artist from China, skilled in seeking intersections between visual design, interactive installations, spatial narratives, and motion graphics through keen observation and deep contemplation. She possesses a strong passion for interdisciplinary fields such as semiotics, psychology, and human behavior studies, aiming to explore the possibilities of combining visual disciplines with diverse domains.

Her works often unfold from the minutiae of everyday life, enthusiastically delving into the hidden psychological phenomena behind human behavior and understanding the fundamental motivations and social significance of human actions. Throughout her creative process, she consistently places the interaction between the audience and the artwork at the core. The audience transitions from passive spectators to active co-creators, with "participation" being the final step in completing the artwork.

Education

BA - Visual Communication Design - Sichuan Fine Arts Institute

MA - Information Experience Design - Royal College of Art

Contact

Degree Details

"Behind Gazing" is an experiment in unconscious boundary violations.

This exhibition leverages large and small cubes to blur the lines between public and private spaces. It takes advantage of the default cognition and curiosity of the audience towards the exhibits, enticing them to violate the personal boundaries of the artist. Through the act of "Gazing hole", the audience unknowingly intrudes into the "secret" space set by the artist. The installation transforms the audience's "Gazing" actions into visual patterns through thermochromic materials and interprets them from dual perspectives.

The realization of the installation is based on the theoretical framework of cognitive differences, establishing rules from the perspectives of the artist and the audience, with the act of viewing being defined as appreciation or violation. The installation reveals a seemingly ordinary "violation" process, triggering our reflection on the self-centered thinking patterns in our daily lives that lead to unconscious violations. The aim is to inspire the public to consider how to achieve a balance between themselves and others in interpersonal communication.

The invasion of boundaries happens in the present moment,

You crossed the line, yet remain unaware.

When you discover a small hole in the exhibition hall, you unconsciously approach it to observe. As you bring your face closer, thermochromic paint undergoes changes in response to the heat. Subsequently, a camera detects the color changes and captures the traces in real-time. These traces are then uploaded to a computer program for image processing, eventually being transmitted to a printer and displayed on an electronic screen.

Your trespassing behavior has been permanently recorded.

The camera senses a colour change and captures a picture in real time - the image is processed by the program - the image is transferred to the printer and displayed on the screen

Medium: Wood Structure, acrylic, printer, moving images

Size: 100cm*100cm*35cm

Patterns captured and recorded in real-time

The printed content accumulates traces from each past violation and cumulatively calculates the number of boundary breaches, thus metaphorically representing daily life infringements.

Medium: Thermochromic pigments, Acrylic, Paper

Size: 35*35*35cm

Moving image in small hole

The content of the hole is a private secret deliberately hidden by the author; the image is selected from the author's most intimate act, the "bath", and is shot with a fisheye lens to increase the voyeuristic perspective and the sense of secrecy

Images 1920*1080

Thanks to everyone who helped with this project.

(Special thanks to Wenqiang Jia, Yuzhuo Wang, Changming Sun)

Medium: Video

Size: 1170 x 2532px

The relevance of spatial privacy and psychological privacy

The most intimate area records the deepest thinking patterns and behavior habits of individuals, and is also a microcosm of our daily life. In this corner, we temporarily break the bubble of psychological boundaries and return to our most authentic and peaceful selves. Therefore, the project collects the most intimate corners of 15 individuals through 3D scanning, which have strong symbolic meanings and personal significance, and behind these 15 corners are 15 individuals.

In order to achieve different privacy states, people usually choose different places. In the process of collecting spaces, I found the transition from area privacy to emotional privacy. The interviewees had similarities in choosing spaces and telling stories, but the degree of emotional privacy varied. This proves that space privacy and psychological privacy are not completely separated, and their essence has a strong correlation.

Privacy and Control: Reinvention of space

This seemingly ordinary living space is actually a reshaping of the most private corners of different individuals.

I assumed the role of an intruder, utilizing a 360 scanner to capture the private spaces of the interviewees while conducting meticulous inquiries and questioning. In order to intensify the sense of conflict and offense following the breach of privacy, I wielded power to forcefully assert dominance over others' wills.

Personal space serves as an expression of territorial consciousness. Altman (1975) proposed that privacy is the "selective control over access by others," emphasizing the ability to control one's environment according to personal preferences. Thus, privacy is not merely a state but rather a form of control. This undertaking compelled the unrelated and most intimate corners of the interviewees' hearts to be amalgamated and physically reconstructed.

The resulting space appears to be ordinary daily life, but it is actually a reshaping of space, a disappearance of individual control, and a breaking of individual boundaries.

Medium: 3D Scan, Audio-visual Moving Image

Size: 7 min 31 sec

Boundary awareness

While standing in the circle, looking at every footstep that passes me by, I find that most people have a hard time realising that mental boundaries exist.

So when I make the boundaries visible in tangible material terms, it is easier for people to judge and react to them.

Street Boundary Experiment

Biological variation in extreme climates

Climate change accelerates the aberration process for non-humans. As the unstoppable creating process, it will continually produce more adaptive aberration to resilient this world. We create an aberration world through digital technology, generating an immersive experience for audiences to explore the abnormal world. All efforts aim to call for attention action on climate change issue.