Second year ACT student Ringo Runzhou Ye is an artist, architect, and designer and works with a broad range of media, including graphic design, architectural design, interactive installation, Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality (AR/VR), projection mapping, and sound creation.
His current research focuses on mixed reality as a new form and interface of art, and how augmentation can be used as a new means for art intervention. Ringo’s work explores the augmentation of senses, sites, and data. He believes that mixed reality can bring new opportunities for artists not only to augment the use of sites, but also to create a better cultural and emotional experience for the viewer.
Current Work:
Behind the Screen is an AR artwork that developed from a tiny Gallium Nitride semiconductor material through “beautiful mistakes and glitches.”
An accidental imperfect scientific experiment created this particular semiconductor material, and the glitch caused its unclean but esthetic surface image. Ringo translated these images into 3D objects and created more “glitches,” which led to an AR glitch artwork.
With the microscope, the viewer is able to transcend the limits of natural perception and see the information previously invisible to the naked eye, and this information is hidden behind another screen – augmented reality. He used the AR interface to create a virtual world based digital exhibition to showcase the creation and generation of artwork, to make the process of viewing art become a game of learning and exploration.
Previous work:
Visualizing Mandala is a mixed reality project that Ringo created in 2017. With the HoloLens head-mounted device, the artwork allows people to walk into a surreal space depicted by a mandala intended to help the viewer with meditation and psychotherapy by creating an intervention that affects the viewer’s perception of space.
A recent project paper, Sound of Shape, was accepted by CHI 2018 (The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems).
Sound of Shape is a project consisting of strand-like objects that enable the user to create sounds while exploring the different shapes and configurations possible with the unique technology. A strand is formed using styrene segments, flex sensors, Nitinol wires, brass strips, an accelerometer, proximity sensor, magnet, and foam. The final form of the strand works as a rope, and is able to be deformed with the use of hinges to the user’s desired shape.
Natural gestures, such as tapping and shaking, are measured by the accelerometer and proximity sensor, which determine the type of sound produced by the 2D shape.
Shown above, a prototype of Ringo’s project.
Ringo utilizes this technology as a way to compose and perform music, as well as a secondary tool for shaping and modulating sound, using it’s unique capabilities to display a number of instrumental sounds. He has thought about this technology’s implications as a tool for not only musicians and sound artists, but to motivate children to learn about the physics of sound through the manipulation of shapes.
Shown above, an example of Ringo’s technology and its current capabilities.
