Xinpeng Zhao

Medium: Interactive webpage

Size: 1920px x 1080px

The nearby is a space of representation — a lived space that generates intimate knowledge about how the social world is constituted in concrete and contradictory ways, thereby suggesting potential for changes. 

The interactive webpage as the research progress and outcome, uses barriers as research object to discuss the phenomenon. It is to redesign the gap as a mediator to interrupt people's neglect of the scope hidden by obstacles, thus provoking the audience's exploratory behaviour to see and to further experience the gap in order to repair the disappearance nearby. 

Through collecting visual archives from Bayswater that are related to individual identity, I create a sensory-led experience for people in the virtual space to find the remixed giant spectacle of barriers. At the end of the webpage, I deployed an image of an obstacle that was digitally populated with thousands of images of this place to provoke people to think subconsciously about what is nearby and what is not visible while using the page. A blurry self who was absent in the real world will appear in front of the barriers to mind the gap between the barriers.

Link: https://gap.xinpengzhao.com/ （Full-screen viewing is recommended）

The place is a type of object, an object in which one can dwell, a stable object that catches people's attention, a focus of value, nurture and support. If we have a sense of space because we can move, then we have a sense of place because of a pause in movement. The pause makes it possible for a locality to become a centre of felt value.

The gap of obstacles is the visual window when the experience pauses.

Based on the specific location — Bayswater which has a non-place state, through a visual ethnography method, I did an on-site observation of the road edge to record images and road noise, and to do the study and interpretation of social organisations and cultures in daily life, from the perspective of the neglected obstacles. This research advocates a way of perceiving the ‘the nearby’ by taking ‘the gap’ as a central scope. The nearby is a lived space where one encounters people with diverse backgrounds on a regular basis. The nearby brings different positions into one view angle, thus constituting a ‘scope’ of seeing. Such scope enables nuanced understandings of reality and facilitates new social relations and actions. 

Sometimes the barrier is the gap. 

The possibility of bestowing form and function onto formless things — like invisible barriers that may appear to be gaps with a particular form and function, when viewed from a different, alternative perspective. 

These virtual landscapes are to offer the audience a new experience of materiality and an objective perspective on phenomena and to think critically in this way. As N. Katherine Hayles pointed out in How we became posthuman that finiteness is a state of humanity. Humanity is embedded in a complex world, and human continuity cannot be separated from the material world. This is because embodiment and the integration of people with their native environment in the post-human era are important.

Encounter: Watch the spectacle ➝ Inspect: Find the gap ➝ Recognize: Click the gap ➝ Interpret: Explore the nearby

Medium: Mixed media

Size: 1920px x 1080px

The imprisoned poem: how humans cross the 'Ping' when the body is hindered is an optical illusion installation demo which is currently digital on an interactive web page. The Object below the installation are barriers embedded with experimental videos, which correspond to poems written by three observers about how humans cross the 'Ping Feng' when the body is hindered. When people enter the space, Imagine we are there, the first thing people sees is a complete obstacle, like a visual barrier. All thoughts are lost. But When we rotate the angle of view, we discover that the installation is actually made up of several monomers of 'Ping Feng'. This is kind of like an illusion like we subconsciously avoid obstacles. Gaps allow audience to pass through and to look closely at the video, Listen and read how people use poetic words and non-human elements instead of the tools that intervene in this obstacle.

Link: https://theimprisonedpoem.xinpengzhao.com/（Full-screen viewing is recommended）