Overview of the Series
How can textile intangible cultural heritage come alive beyond glass cases in the age of AI and generative systems?
Generative Unravelling (《生成解构》) is a practice-led research series by Mi Lin, developed within her doctoral research at the Royal College of Art. Centred on Miao Piling Embroidery (Chinese: 苗族堆绣)—an Indigenous textile intangible cultural heritage (ICH) from southwest China—the work repositions embroidery as a living generative system through which cultural memory, symbolic structures, and embodied knowledge are continuously re-formed.
Images of Miao Pilling Embroidery, Motif of Bird (Part of a Baby-Carrying Belt), from Museum of Ethnic Cultures
Images of The Research Subject—Miao Pilling Embroidery
Historically, Miao embroidery (Chinese: 苗绣) has carried identity, cosmology, and intergenerational knowledge through material, gesture, and repetition. Yet within contemporary exhibition contexts, it is often reduced to static display, detached from the processes through which it persists and evolves.
Across immersive experiences, Generative Unravelling brings textile thinking, generative systems, and embodied interaction into relation. Heritage is not represented but activated—emerging through interaction as a process of continual becoming between hand, memory, algorithm, and shared cultural imagination.
Works in the Series
• 3:33 — A large-scale immersive experience inviting audiences to step into Miao Piling Embroidery through embodied, generative encounters with living transmission.
3:33 marks the culmination of the Generative Unravelling series, integrating ∞: Thousand Threads, Thousand Universes and Hand in Thought — Unravelling the Intangible into a unified immersive experience of Miao Piling Embroidery.
• ∞: Thousand Threads, Thousand Universes (《∞: 千针千界》) — A generative audiovisual journey through the textility, rhythm, and cosmological imagination of Miao Piling Embroidery.
• Hand in Thought — Unravelling the Intangible (《手中思绪——解构无形》) — A gesture-responsive generative installation translating embroidery-inspired movements into embodied encounters with the intangible knowledge of Miao Piling Embroidery.
3:33
Video of 3:33 — Installation Documentation
Music Credit: © TunePocket — Royalty-Free Synchronisation License
→ Explore Work: 3:33
∞: Thousand Threads, Thousand Universes
→ Explore Work ∞: Thousand Threads, Thousand Universes
Hand in Thought — Unravelling the Intangible
→ Explore Work Hand in Thought — Unravelling the Intangible
Visibility & Recognition of Generative Unravelling
9 Exhibitions, 4 Salons, 4 Awards, 1 Featured Artist Profile, and Wider International Coverage
Generative Unravelling has been presented across international exhibitions, festivals, and institutional platforms, situating the work at the intersection of contemporary art, design, and cultural heritage.
Selected exhibitions include London Craft Week, the IEEE ICME AIART Gallery in Nantes, and the Shanghai Art Museum. The series has been featured in Aesthetica Magazine and received international media coverage from Xinhua Finance, Xinhua Silk Road, and China Minutes.
Lin is the recipient of the International Design Awards 2025 and was shortlisted for the V&A × Design Society Design Values Award 2025.
→ For full details, see Visibility & Recognition of Generative Unravelling
