Xuan Ye^CN/CA

Toronto-based artist and software programmer Xuan Ye fuels their mixed media installations and performances with poetry, synthesized language, code, sound, the human body, data, images, light and time. Their work couples more-than-human agents with the speculative sensorium realm. Artificial intelligence, internet culture, electric circuits and non-human organisms come into play in their body of work. X’s works speculate on systemic problems and distributed consciousness in various interconnected networks. The artist has been featured and exhibited internationally, including Fonderie Darling (CA), the Art Gallery of Ontario (CA) and the Goethe-Institut (Beijing and Montréal), among others. X is a recipient of SSHRC scholarship and a finalist of 2018 EQ Bank Digital Artists Award. As a musician, they have performed at numerous experimental music festivals and DIY shows, and have been commissioned by New Music Edmonton (2021) and Canadian Music Centre (2020). Their live performances and releases have also received critical accolades from Bandcamp, Musicworks and Exclaim!.

Xuan Ye ^CN/CA — Belly of the Whale

Belly of The Whale is a virtual reality experience set in a digital ocean, using real-time EEG sonification and a custom software system. On a ship, passengers’ geo-locations are tracked and stored as data streams. Their navigational paths are visualized as specters, dynamically placed in the environment over time, visible to the upcoming users. The observed migration patterns reflect the systemic structures of surveillance capitalism. An impossible staircase appears, using a generative algorithm to create new steps each time the user goes up or down, trapping them in a navigational loophole. Belly of The Whale is the third chapter of The Spectacles Before Us Were Indeed Sublime, an ongoing project which started in 2018, in collaboration with Jonathan Carroll.
This project is supported by Toronto Arts Council. The EEG headset is sponsored by MUSE.