Recently, Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts (SIVA) hosted a distinctive and immersive HOX Zodiac intensive workshop. Invited by the DeTao Masters Academy and jointly organized by the School of Future Design at Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts, internationally renowned media artist and UCLA Design Media Arts professor Victoria Vesna led students in an in-depth dialogue centered on genetic science, zodiac culture, and contemporary art.
The HOX ZODIAC project has evolved over the past 18 years and has previously been exhibited in Los Angeles, New York, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tsukuba, Vienna, Paris, Motovun, and Slovenia. Rooted in Chinese zodiac culture and coinciding with the transition from one lunar year to the next, this marked the project’s first presentation in mainland China — both a cultural homecoming and a timely, symbolically resonant moment.
A Performative / Participatory Luncheon
The workshop culminated in a performative luncheon that brought together faculty and students from SIVA, alongside invited artists, engineers, and scientists. Seated at a long table according to their zodiac signs, guests became part of a carefully staged interdisciplinary performance. Students presented each dish in sequence, pairing food with concise narratives that linked zodiac symbolism to genetics, ecology, and evolving relationships between humans and animals.
Using the zodiac as a shared language, the event unfolded as a warm yet intellectually charged exchange between art and science. Conversation flowed freely, and ideas collided across disciplines.
In his closing remarks, Lin Min, Executive Vice President of SIVA, praised the students’ work and emphasized the importance of engaging with traditional Chinese culture through contemporary, interdisciplinary approaches. He encouraged students to develop cultural confidence and to contribute new Chinese narratives within a global context. He also highlighted the workshop’s underlying philosophy of non-anthropocentrism, where humans and animals are understood as equal participants in a shared ecological system — an idea with growing relevance for our collective future.
Honored Guests (by Zodiac cycle):
Rat—闫金丽 Yan Jinli; Ox—马麟鸿 Ma Linhong; Tiger—熊洁 Xiong Jie; Dragon—吴俊 Wu Jun, 薛刚 Xue Gang, Soeun Bae; Snake—张弘 Zhang Hong; Horse—陈月浩 Chen Yuehao, 刘玉婷 Liu Yuting; Sheep—金豪 Jin Hao, 陈迪辉 Chen Dihui; Monkey—张恒 Zhang Heng; Rooster—林敏 Lin Min; Dog—木巾 Mujin.
工作坊组织 (Workshop Coordinator):
Dragon—李天娇 (Li Tianjiao)
摄影 (Photographer):
Pig—赵奕瑶 (Zhao Yiyao)
翻译(Translator)
Dragon—张婷婷 (Zhang Tingting)
特别致谢 (Special Thanks):
Rat—闫金丽 (Yan Jinli)
Students: Mouse—丁奕程 Ding Yicheng; Dog—查恒烨 Cha Hengye, 丁予宁 Ding Yuning, 刘一涵 Liu Yihan; Monkey—陈定鸿 Chen Dinghong; Rooster—刘慕瑶 Liu Muyao; Pig—郝婕 Hao Jie, 刘宇琦 Liu Yuqi, 马千画 Ma Qianhua, 沈乐然 Shen Leran, 汪欣月 Wang Xinyue.
AI visualizations in art represent a digital renaissance, blending precision of algorithms with imagination of artists. The process of prompt input and interaction between artist and machine is a testimony of new artistic frontiers.
This workshop will explore various AI-powered software tools for generative art creation for images, videos and audio. We will focus on practical skills, including crafting effective prompts to produce optimal generative artworks. Interactive sessions will provide hands-on experience, enabling attendees to develop and refine their AI-generated art pieces with precision and creativity. Discover the transformative potential of AI in both artistic expression and professional applications, and envision the future shaped by advancements from OpenAI and more.
To prepare for the workshop, please sign up for free trials of Midjourney, RunwayML, and Stable Audio. This will allow us to test them together during the session.
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Yuting Tao [Intern at UCLA ArtSci Center and Harvestworks NY] is a forward-thinking media artist based in New York City, who investigates social interventions through immersive installation with narratives, AI and extended reality. With a focus on narrative development, Yuting endeavors to bridge the generational divide between Gen Z and earlier generations, fostering a shared understanding and appreciation for the evolving societal narrative.
Yuting earned her Bachelor’s degree from UCLA Design Media Arts program, where her passion for blending traditional storytelling with contemporary digital mediums flourished. Her academic pursuits sharpened her skills in AR and VR, paving the way for her innovative approach to narrative exploration. Currently, she is investigating on the application of generative art.
Yuting’s artistic journey is a testimony to her belief in the power of technology as a tool for social preservation and adaptation. Through her work, she creates not just visually enthralling experiences, but also platforms for dialogue, reflection, and connection across generational lines.
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DataX Workshops series Designing our Future: Environment, Community and Technology
DataX presents Professor of Information Studies, Ramesh Srinivasan, in conversation with an interdisciplinary set of UCLA professors focused on environmental issues such as climate change and their intersection with questions of justice and voice in relation to the proliferation and use of big data. This new series will feature a hallmark event each quarter! Registration required.
The event will have an online as well as in person* option.
Guest Faculty:
Victoria Vesna is an Artist and Professor at the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts and Director of the Art|Sci center at the School of the Arts and California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI).
Karen McKinnon is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, the Department of Statistics and Data Science, and the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences all at UCLA.
Alesia Montgomery is an Assistant Professor at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and in African American Studies.
*In person location: Collins Conference Room, James West Alumni Center on the UCLA campus.
The Quantum Drawing workshop designed by Honorary Professor Paul Thomas would benefit scientists, physicists, artists and designers. The participants will explore via drawing concepts of John Bell’s 1964 provocation, to try and capture reality in the act of happening. Bell’s theorem was designed to prove or disprove the fundamental concepts of quantum mechanics. The Quantum Drawing workshop draws an analogous relationship with probability and uncertainty prevalent in science where the observer affects what is observed. The workshop questions the role of the observer influencing what is seen and experienced whilst measuring the world through drawn marks. By the act of drawing, the participants will question their roles in observing and measuring the world. Complex subjects such as delayed choice quantum erasure, probability, indeterminacy, entanglement, superposition and the classical-quantum divide will be explored through the traditional act of mark-making. When an artist makes a mark on a piece of paper through a process of summing all the probabilities of what they experience then the mark collapses the world down to a single state. Intentional repositioning and reshaping of science practices through art can promote exploration of different ways of visualising, perceiving, understanding, communicating and acting in the material world. In so doing this workshop becomes a model for facilitating transdisciplinary development of alternative domains and discourses that garner insights gained from perception, seeing with understanding.
UNDERSTANDING VIBRATIONS: FROM NANOTECHNOLOGY TO EASTERN PHILOSOPHY A TALK WITH VICTORIA VESNA, PHD
In this talk, Dr. Victoria Vesna discusses vibrations from the point of view of visual and sound artists considering the scientific research into matter, brain waves, human and animal voice, environmental noise and outer space.
Quantum mechanics is based on music theory and nanotechnology is showing us the waves that underlie all matter which many Eastern philosophies have known for centuries. We need to learn to listen to the inaudible.
The way we, as humans, participate in the vibrational fields and flows of energy of the Planet Earth is embodied practice, even if the process often remains somewhat mysterious, unnoticed or unacknowledged. This workshop will explore how a human vocalization, which is nothing else than amplified and conscious breathing, can become a practice of inquiry into the planetary water cycle.
The human body is a fluid phenomenon, not only because the average amount of water in human organism ranges between 45-75%, depending on the particular organ or tissue (majority of which constitutes intracellular fluid), but also because it is incorporated into the planetary cycle, in which water constantly changes from liquid to vapor to ice, circulating around, through, and above the Earth. Through a simple act of breathing we may participate in the whole range of scales and time flows: for the terrestrial atmosphere, a given water molecule, the one we breathe in and breathe out as oxygen, might spend in the atmosphere 15,23 days on the average. What if the way we breathe and vocalize impacts the water cycles? Can we turn our bodies into water cycles measuring units and the instruments of cooperation with weather patterns? What if even the tiniest movement of the oxygen in our nostrils and lungs and even the slightest resonation of the vocal cords, chest, and abdomen can affect a rainstorm?
Meditating on such questions may provide an interesting departure point for both scientific inquiry and embodied practice of breathing and vocalizing.
Join us as we welcome in the new year with a discussion about Public Art and Atmospheric Science. Within this virtual conversation with Dr. Andrea Polli, Dr. Suzanne Paulson and Emily Womack, we will learn how these concepts converge and facilitate expanding awareness about one of our most critical diminishing resources - clean air.
Under the Hood is a video series presented by the UCLA ArtSci Center that pops open the “hood” to reveal the mechanics and mechanisms of ArtSci projects. In these short interviews, you are invited to take a deep dive into the process of how these complex artworks are created. Through a practical break-down of the technology, software, and science behind these art-science features, you will gain understanding of how art-based research is practiced and applied. Under the Hood is a series that serves as a source of inspiration and information for anyone interested in understanding the inner-workings of the multidisciplinary projects at the ArtSci Center.
Victoria Vesna’s work has long focused on immersing her audiences in installation spaces that are meant to slow down time and take us into other dimensions. This led her to work in close collaborations with musicians, sound artists, nanoscientists, biologists, neuro-scientists and buddhist monks among others. Some examples of work in the past two decades are the NanoMandala, Water Bowls, Blue Morph, Octopus Brain Storming, Bird Song Diamond and most recently the Noise Aquarium. In this new work, together with her collaborators from the UCLA Art Sci collective and Harvestworks, she takes us on a meditative journey to outer space.
Premiering with the support of Harvestworks, this work is meant to be experienced as a guided meditation bringing to life the sensations of meteorites and micro-meteorites falling on all continents and mixing with the anthropogenic dust falling on our planet from many dimensions. Layers of sounds from inner and outer space with animations of dust and data driven by corona deaths are presented with the intent of honoring those who left their bodies without preparation and all who are suffering.
This online version was created as a meditation that is guided by the artist following the extra-terrestrial, terrestrial, and human-made dusts traveling far and wide and creating complexity that is part of an invisible reality. Most go about their daily life without being aware of ever thinking about the extraterrestrial dusts that could be on their kitchen floor, right here on earth. The alien signal is lost in the human noise and the group meditation reclaims our vision of planetary citizenship.
We are created from stardust by nuclear fusion, like our myriad siblings – animals, plants, insects, plankton, bacteria, and viruses, and we all function together in vibratory fields – bottom up just as nature and nanotechnology works. [Alien] Star Dust rains on us every day and this piece brings these particles to our attention and reminds us of our interconnected heritage in the larger cosmos. Dust knows no borders.
