BEYOND GARDEN

Amidst a global pandemic and the collective sensory deprivation of quarantine isolation, how can we honor the voices of grief and survival to reimagine our reality? A collaboration between Studio Dyan Jong, floorkids.studio, and Nick Gregg, BEYOND GARDEN is a web-VR light and poetry experiential installation incorporating audio-visual lighting, ambient sound design, and AR filters, to create a public space for healing, togetherness, and encounter, within the confines of a browser. The concept was led by a desire to create a digital Chinese garden, or "yuan", which are public spaces for visitors to drink tea, read poetry, socialize, philosophize, and contemplate the harmony of man and nature.

BEYOND GARDEN is inspired by the ancient Chinese classic Commentary of the Water Classics, an essay on the phenomenological language of water that de-centers the human narrative. As a visitor enters the many mysterious dune-like capsules that sprinkle the landscape, they find themself immersed inside poems whispered and written by diasporic Chinese poets (JinJin Xu, Carlina Duan, Jiaoyang Li). The bilingual poems interweave Mandarin and English to collectively sing, grieve, and heal.

  • Dyan Jong
    Key Collaborators
  • Aaron Santiago
    Key Collaborators
  • Nicholas Gregg
    Key Collaborators
  • Lucy Yao
    Key Collaborators
  • Carlina Duan
    Poets
  • Jiaoyang Li
    Poets
  • Jin Jin Xu
    Poets
  • Project Type:
    Virtual Reality, Installation, Game, Other
  • Completion Date:
    September 24, 2020
  • Production Budget:
    500 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Language:
    English, Mandarin Chinese
  • Student Project:
    No
  • LA Design Festival
    Los Angeles
    United States
    September 24, 2020
Director Biography

I’m a Taiwanese American director and artist based in Los Angeles. My light installations are my most personal work, where I repurpose film lights to create temporal, immersive contemplations on immigration and third culture. The film lights are a nod to my professional background in image production and are purposefully exposed, rather than hidden behind the scenes to acknowledge their role in shaping Hollywood movie magic. Light is no longer used to create an image for commercial consumption but transformed into a lived experience for the audience, to encounter + document themselves on "set" as both consumers + creators.

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Director Statement

Because of the pandemic, I began expanding my commercial practice into the virtual production space, using game engines and AR filters to bring creative concepts into the digital space. As my light installation practice moves tightly parallel to my filmmaking practice, I also began thinking about how to create a virtual web-based light installation, where people could safely share art experiences in public spaces, and also document themselves doing so. Beyond Garden is a first foray into that exploration, alongside equal collaborators Aaron Santiago, Nick Gregg, Lucy Yao, and poets Carlina Duan, Jiaoyang Li, and Jin Jin Xu.