Hand in Thought — Unravelling the Intangible

A gesture-driven interactive installation where audiences generate evolving embroidery-like forms in real time.

Researcher & Artist

Feb. 2025 to Mar. 2025

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About the Work

Video of Hand in Thought—Unravelling the Intangible

Emerging from the postdigital era, where physical and digital dimensions continually converge, this interactive installation re-embodies intangible cultural heritage through motion. Through its hybrid form—combining gesture-responsive, motion-tracked generative projection on digitally printed leather and ambient audio—it serves as a metaphor for cultural transmission as a process of hybridity and renewal, inviting audiences into a shared immersive encounter. The piece is conceived through the lens of Textile Thinking.

In Miao culture, which historically lacked a written script, embroidery became a vessel of memory. Motifs—flowers, animals, cosmological symbols—narrated ancestry, beliefs, and daily life. Echoing this practice, embroidery-inspired gestures—hovering, grasping, swaying, stitching—are captured in real time and translated into evolving visuals that bloom like abstract flowers, gradually crystallising into embroidery-like forms as meaning emerges through embodied participation.

Gestures and Corresponding Generated Motion Responses

Each gesture becomes a variable in a living programme, symbolising how tradition evolves through repetition and variation. Heritage here is not preserved behind glass, but experienced as a hybrid process of continuity and change—enacted through shared interaction, playful curiosity, and co-creation. At its core, the piece honours the artisans, predominantly women, whose embodied knowledge sustains this heritage while inviting audiences to participate in its ongoing renewal.

Technical Information

Hand in Thought — Unravelling the Intangible
(手中思绪——解构无形)

Series
Generative Unravelling

Medium / Format
Interactive installation with generative digital imagery, real-time motion tracking, and projection on digitally printed textile

Dimensions
Approx. 3 m (D) × 2 m (H) × 1.5 m (W)

Technical
Real-time gesture tracking (Ultraleap Leap Motion); 4K (3840 × 3840 px) visuals and audio; projected onto a 107.8 × 107.8 cm square frame

Loop Duration
2 minutes 44 seconds (2:44)

Year
2025

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