块茎制图法 Original

My work focuses on Gilles Deleuze’s "Rhizome" theory and the relationship between plants and feedback loops, visually manifesting the spiritual connection between botanical life and the author.

Plants represent a "decentralized" mode of existence. Lacking a unified center of consciousness, every branch and root tip perceives the world independently yet collaboratively. This "diffuse existence" symbolizes an open state of life that transcends individualism—a state typified by lawns, rhizomatic plants, and seas of flowers. The author interprets this concept through the lens of floral clusters and "flower seas," developing a series of eruptive, dynamic mappings within a non-linear dimension devoid of breakpoints.

Unlike traditional art, digital art frequently employs feedback loops to create dynamically growing visuals or sounds—such as the feedback engines in TouchDesigner or sound feedback effects in Techno production. The self-circulating systems of plants echo these digital loops. Plants produce endless, repetitive, and stable feedback in response to sunlight and seasons; the input of light and nutrients instantaneously alters their vital state, forming internal cycles. Through these closed-loop systems, they achieve self-governance.

The "rhizomatic decentralized mapping" found in plants coincides with the feedback systems inherent in digital art. Spiritually, both achieve a state of "positive life energy"—infinitely connected, ceaseless, without beginning or end, and defined by self-generating cycles.

The work currently consists of four parts, which trigger one another sequentially while collectively forming a larger macro-feedback loop:

1. The Nutrients: A particle simulation depicts nutrients watering seeded soil. As nutrients pour into the soil—which rotates at a constant, endless speed—the falling particles establish an interactive link with the music via a feedback system.

2. The Spread: Flowers spread across the watered soil in a random, diffuse, and decentralized manner. Tens of thousands of "breathing" decentralized organisms cover the surrounding stones in the spatial background, pulsating with a collective rhythm.

3. The Connection: A point-cloud scan of the second part’s digital space generates a point-cloud model. These uniform points, devoid of hierarchy, are constrained by interconnecting lines, achieving a literal "rhizomatic connection."

4. The Archive: The visuals from the third part undergo a uniform grid processing. Pixelated frame-captures are automatically distributed across these grids according to the playback rate. This serves not only as an archive of the footage but as a dynamic mapping system that continuously self-evolves and smoothens through recursion.

Adhering to the philosophy of the "purposeless beauty" of plants, the generative visuals of this work serve no specific function. They are the "overflow" of vitality overcharged within a feedback loop. Every fleeting image captured by the viewer on the screen represents a "contract" momentarily signed between the plant, the viewer, and the algorithm.

The next stage of research will shift from macro-landscapes to the micro-organs of individual plants. Based on the "modularity" of botany—the ability to regenerate from independent organs even after losing 90% of the body—I will explore the "distributed intelligence" of plants. This will serve as a deeper biological response to and continuation of decentralized feedback systems.