We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Yitao Yuan. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Yitao below.
Yitao, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
I was once responsible for a ten-floor architectural projection project, from drone 3d scanning assets to projection setup and image calibration. I was only 20 years old at that time as a junior year college student who was lucky enough to get such an opportunity as part of the campus New Year’s Eve activity.
Even though I majored in digital media technology, it was still quite a challenge for me during that time since I had never had any experience with an actual large project outside the classroom, which meant I was responsible for each dollar spent on it. For the first time in my life, I had to think about a plan so detailed to such an extent how many drones we needed, how long each could fly, and so on. There are a lot of technical details and new techniques I haven’t tried yet. I was stressed and felt so anxious that I was unable to sleep for nights.
It was a challenge but also a chance. It was very rare for an undergraduate to take on such a project, and I knew this might be my chance to start working as a technical director for a digital media art project. My mentor at that time was very helpful to me. As an expert with more experience, he accompanied and guided my work so patiently and responsibly. I remember one day when our large projection equipment was about to be installed on-site. It was a cold winter day. The whole team began to build the equipment tower in an orderly manner in the light snow. No matter how carefully planned, there will always be unexpected accidents. Due to strong winds, we had to lower the expected tower height, which required us to recalculate and calibrate the projection range on site. My mentor, the team, and I worked late at night, but no one here had any complaints. Our passion and enthusiasm to complete the work seemed like a warm current, filling us with warmth as we worked outdoors on the cold winter night without a single chill. I still remember that when we finally finished the construction that night, it was almost sunrise the next day. A movie-like scene has always been in my memory. With the rising sun, our team members excitedly hugged each other in the thin layer of white snow after successfully screening the test film.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I have years of experience in the film industry, but then decided to step beyond film creation and embarked on my journey as an independent new media artist.
As a filmmaker, I always felt limited by all kinds of elements. Whether my role in the team is as a technician or a creative team, there will always be compromises for all parties. Sometimes, it may be a creative conflict, and sometimes, it has to be constrained by funding. I still love the film industry, but I do realize that film can be just a medium for artists to express and create, and there can be more diverse media beyond this. Especially with my background as a digital media technician, there are infinite possibilities to be discovered in the continuous updating of new technologies. Therefore, I am determined to become a digital media artist.
Because of my background as a technician, I am always interested in the relationship between humans and technology. My practice centers around the evolving relationships between life, technology, and nature. I deeply engage with social issues, questioning how human experience is shaped by and reflected in the technologies we create and live with. At the heart of my work lies the practice of individuation and transindividuation, as Gilbert Simondon calls it.
My current interests arise from my study of machine fetishism. Ever since the rise of capitalism, the Industrial Revolution significantly advanced the role of machines in production. However, it’s an oversimplification to view machines solely as products of capitalism. Machines result from both technological progress and scientific innovation. Machines exemplify the application of scientific knowledge in technology. Marx’s concept of alienation in capitalism refers to workers’ estrangement from their labor and products, not the machines themselves. The fetishism, as discussed by Marx, involves viewing the products from machines as commodities that obscure the social relations behind their production. Its prevalence is almost across all modern ideologies. This alienation results from the pursuit of profit in capitalism, and machines here create an illusion of productivity. Machines, thus, reflect broader socio-economic dynamics rather than being inherently alienating. From the perspective of sociology, as David Harvey explains, “By fetishism, I mean the habit humans have of endowing real or imagined objects or entities with self-contained, mysterious, and even magical powers to move and shape the world in distinctive ways.”, the machine fetishism is a mistaken belief that machines are an object that is productive in itself.
More critical and urgent for my research is, as Harvey David states: “It is always possible to do the right thing for entirely wrong reasons,” I argue that it is also possible to do the wrong thing for entirely right reasons. The situation of technology has changed dramatically nowadays. Instead of classic mechanical designs, there are cube black boxes coded and virtually existing AI systems. It is time to review history and combine it with the present to rethink and research how technological objects interact with humans’ individual and collective individuation in a new epistemology. The intimacy between modern technology and humans gave birth to more complexity in our minds. The theoretical research relating human psychology to technology is also not limited to the very “fetishism.” My interests in themes from cultural, social, and political dimensions of science and technology require a space with such solid and comprehensive academic support and help from scientists and engineers who devote themselves to the progress of technology.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
As an artist, there are almost unlimited ways to express our thoughts and feelings. Of course, the most common way for humans to express themselves is through speech, writing, and communication through language. But language is ultimately an incomplete expression technique. Humans use language as a technique to try to convey information as much as possible, but it is ultimately one meaning pointing to another meaning. There is always a part of our world, emotions, and thoughts that language cannot capture. As an artist, I can try to convey this part that is omitted by language through other forms of expression. This is a rewarding aspect that can almost be considered an artist’s privilege. However, precisely because of this, I always believe that anyone can be an artist because we all have something unspeakable in our minds waiting for us to discover and then express through art.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
Yes, that is to become the me that I imagine myself to be. We have heard too many motivational speeches encouraging us to be our true selves. But I think we may not know what the real self is, or there is no real self at all. What really exists is a self that we have imagined in our minds. I don’t think this is a bad thing, or that I treat it in a negative way. In fact, I think there is nothing wrong with it. What has always inspired me to do is to become and get closer to such a real self that I imagine. And this self that I imagine is an artist who is full of vitality and creativity, a promoter who cares about the current society, humanity and the future.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://yitaoyuan.xyz
- Instagram: @yuanyitaoyyt
