John C

Datarium is a series of generative animation/video installations. In this series, I imagine a digital world inhabited by digital creatures. Many portals, some of them appear to be screens and some of them look like everyday objects, bridge the gap between our reality and the digital domain. Each portal offers a unique glimpse into specific areas of the digital world, revealing diverse ecosystems teeming with digital life forms.

Datarium 是一系列的生成動畫/影響裝置。 在這個系列作品中，我想像了一個充滿了奇異數字生物的數字世界。 在我們所處的現實與那個數字世界之間存在著許多傳送門。它們有的是某種電子屏幕，有的看起來像日常用品。 每個傳送門都通往數字世界中的不同區域，向我們展現數字生命形式多樣的生態系統的驚鴻一瞥。

Datarium is the result of a series of extensive studies on diverse natural ecosystems, especially aquatic ones. It is a re-interpretation and re-imagination of the world we occupy, an exploration of alternative forms of organisms, and a question of the essence of life.

Datarium 是對不同自然生態系統，尤其是水生生態系統進行一系列廣泛研究的成果。 它是對我們所處世界的重新詮釋和想像，是對另一種生物體形式的探索，也是對生命本質的追問。

Visit Project Datarium's website to find out more: https://johncheung.art/datarium

請瀏覽Project Datarium的網站：https://johncheung.art/datarium

When creating Platystomata, I took inspiration from various aquatic organisms, including jellyfish, coral, and spirogyra. The aquatic organisms themselves already look quite alien to us humans. They live in a very different environment from us and thus have evolved radically different strategies to survive. To make Platystomata more exotic, I exaggerated the movement of its inner structure. The design of those shrinking and stretching strings came indirectly from the DNA double helix.

當我在創造Platystomata的時候，我研究並揉和了好幾種不同的水生生物，包括水母，珊瑚和水綿。這些水生生物本身對我們來說就如同外星物種：它們生活在一個截然不同的環境中，也因此進化出了獨特的生存策略。為了令Platystomata更加不同，我誇張化了它複雜的內部結構的運動。那些不斷伸展又收縮的細線的設計間接地映射了DNA的雙螺旋結構。

Platystomata is the first creature created for Datarium.

Platystomata是我在Datarium中創造的第一種數字生命。

Plasmodata is based on the study of slime mould.Slime mould is an interesting life form. For most of their lifetime, they are free-living single-celled individual entities. However, to reproduce, they will gather and form a plasmodium. Through evolution, those simple cells developed a very sophisticated system of communication using acrasins which is highly similar to the nervous system of animals. In a sense, the slime mould cells form a coordinated “brain” which appears in highly intricate structures.

Plasmodata是基於對黏菌的研究而創作出來的一類數字生命。黏菌是十分奇特的生命形式。在它們的大部分生命中，它們以自由的單細胞形式生活。然而，為了繁衍後代，它們會聚集到一起形成原菌體。它們在進化中發展出了一種十分複雜的利用生化信息素的交流方式。這種交流的系統與動物神經系統的結構驚人地相似。某程度上，它們組成了一個協作的集體智慧。

Inspired by recent studies of how slime mould transmit information, I digitally simulated their behaviors. These simple virtual lives collaboratively generate convoluted and aesthetically pleasing visuals.

受有關黏菌的最新的研究啟發，我用電子程序復現了它們的行為。這些簡單的數字生命協同地創作出精美的圖樣。

Plasmodata is one of the (families of) creatures presented in Datarium.

Plasmodata是Datarium中的數字生命之一。

Ommatoporifera originated from a (cheesy and classic) nightmare, in which I was stared at by thousands of bleeding eyes. The multi-cell structure of it takes the reference of sponges. For a period in the history of taxonomy, people were confused about whether a sponge is a group of cells gathered together in symbiosis or an organism with differentiated tissues. The ambiguity of its identity being an individual or a community invoked a lot of thinking of mine. To give Ommatoporifere a unique characteristic that natural lives can't possess, I coded an algorithm to allow the cells to merge into one. It creates confusion about the direction of time and questions our presumptions about reproduction.

Ommatoporifera源自一個經典老套的噩夢，在其中我被數以千計的血紅眼睛注視著。它的多重細胞結構來自於海綿。在很長一段時間裡，分類學家一直爭論海綿的”個體“到底是共生的許多不同單細胞生物還是分化出了不同組織的一個個體。這種身為一個個體或是一個社群的模糊身分引發了我的思考。為了賦予Ommatoporifera一個自然生命不能擁有的特點，我編寫了一個算法使得它的細胞能合二為一。這令人對“時間”流逝的方向產生困惑，並且與我們關於細胞分裂繁殖的成見相衝突。

Ommatoporifera is also presented in Datarium.

Ommatoporifera是Datarium中的數字生命之一。

A computer program continuously transcribed part of the poem by Polish poet Wisława Szymborska, Children of the Age, onto a webpage. After countless repetitions, the machine became tired, and typos and mistakes gradually appeared in the written content. In the end, it seemed to lose its mind totally and began to write nonsense. In the process, the word “political” emerges from the repeated letters, showing the quantitative characteristic of the text, then gradually gets buried under the random tokens.

電腦程式不斷地在網頁上抄寫波蘭詩人辛波絲卡(Wisława Szymborska)的一首詩，時代的孩子(Children of The Age)，的節選。在無數次的重複後，機器也變得怠倦，書寫的內容漸漸地出現錯字和錯句。而最後它竟像失去了理智，開始胡亂地書寫。在這一個過程中，「政治的」三個字在文字堆中浮現，展示出文本的統計學特性，而後漸漸被埋葬在無序的字句中。

I named the work 流水落花 Floating Petals. 流水落花(floating petals on flowing water) is a Chinese saying, first written by Li Yu, in his verse “流水落花歸去也，天上人間(Petals floating on streams, returning to their end. The past and now is like the heaven and the earth)”. If you are familiar with Hong Kong pop culture, you may also think of Wyman Wong’s lyrics and Sing-Fung Ka’s movies. 流水落花 resembles the opposite of obsession, which forms a strong contrast with the behaviour of the computer program in the work. To be obsessed and then insane, or to let go and then forget, is the biggest problem in this post-XX era.

我將作品命名為流水落花。流水落花典出李後主的「流水落花歸去也，天上人間」。如果你對香港的流行文化比較熟知，可能會想到黃偉文的歌詞，以及賈勝楓的電影。流水落花是完全不同的一種取態，雖也懷念，但全無牽掛，與作品中電腦程式的行為形成強烈的反差。執著以致瘋狂，或是放下然後淡忘，或者是這個後XX時代最大的問題。

The Textbook Of Disappearing is a fun-to-watch useful audio-visual textbook about how to disappear in this digital era, featuring dank humor and bad VFX. No boring lecture, a hundred percent combination of education and entertainment. Published in London, 2023, by the Disappearing Committee.

The Textbook of Disappearing 是一本有趣又有用的關於如何在這個數位時代消失的教科書。本書的特色是奇怪幽默與低質視效的結合。沒有枯燥的說教，百分百的寓教於樂。由the Disappearing Committee於2023年在倫敦發行。

We rushed into a society with highly advanced digital technologies, but not until recently did we realize that it is a cocoon we created. Smartphones and social media are taking our life away. In this tutorial, you will learn how to take back control in simple steps.

在十年內我們大躍進了一個數字技術高度先進的社會，但直到最近我們才意識到這其實是我們創造的一個束縛自己的繭房。智能手機和社交媒體正在奪走我們的生活。在本教程中，你將學習如何通過簡單的幾個步驟收回控制權。

Akira Minagawa is famous for his insistence on using a hand-drawing process for his textile design.

皆川明以他對於純手工作畫翻印設計的堅持而聞名。

I created algorithms to try to recreate similar textile textures from purely 0s and 1s, questioning the possibility of digital media and asking the following questions: Can we recreate everything digitally? If so, does it also means that the “real” world we are in can also be another kind of “digital”? 

我反而以數位算法，嘗試完全從0和1中生成擁有接近於他的布料設計的質感的圖樣，來探索數位生成技術的可能性，以及提出以下的問題：是否所有的東西都可以通過數位生成的方式複製？如果答案是肯定的，那麼是否有可能我們所處的“現實”世界也是某一種的”數位生成“？

Visit the animations here

點擊此處來瀏覽動畫