Biography
Stellar Pathfinding is an interactive installation that reinterprets the ancient Daoist ritual of Bugang Tadou ("Pacing the Guideline and Treading the Dipper") as a corporeal interface for navigating a generative universe. The performer's body, tracked in real-time by a custom computer vision system, becomes a living conduit between the physical and the digital. Each ritual step and gesture, rooted in a pre-modern cosmology of celestial alignment , seeds and sculpts a post-modern "Screen Universe" in real-time. This universe, rendered through a bespoke generative AI, reflects a contemporary spacetime that is fluid, compressed, and abstract. The work is a meditative exploration of the resonance between the human microcosm and the algorithmic macrocosm, questioning how we might find our path and create meaning when the very stars we navigate are forged from data. It is a search for a new form of digital spirituality, where the body's ancient wisdom is used to chart a course through the infinite, invisible cosmos of the machine.
This screen-based interactive installation critiques modern black-box predictive algorithms by juxtaposing them with ancient Chinese divination.
A custom Python backend scrapes live global geopolitical crises, translating them into ancient celestial coordinates. Participants perform Bugang Tadou (a Daoist geometric ritual walk) in front of a standard webcam. Using OpenCV and YOLO for real-time skeletal tracking, the system demands rigorous somatic engagement to "tame" the data stream.
When human-machine alignment is perfected, a generative AI engine (ComfyUI + custom Flux LoRA) dynamically renders the chaotic digital fluid—visualized via TouchDesigner—into a "Speculative Archive" of historical star maps. The work profoundly questions the objectivity of both ancient omens and modern algorithmic forecasting.
Tech: Python, OpenCV, YOLO, ComfyUI, TouchDesigner.