Hanyi Wang

Domestic Travelers: Transparent Machines, Hollow Bodies

Digitization is not a modern invention. Derived from the concept of fingers, this mindset of packing information into quantifiable, interchangeable units sounds mechanical, yet eerily physical. We live under the worldview of Digital Narrative: everything is representable in quantifiable units and fluid across media. Yet this is a framework that cannot accommodate human subtleties and complexities. One needs to flatten or quantify themselves to fit for mere existence. Thus, the acknowledgment of the Unknowables and the materialization of the Uncategorizables are challenges against the rigid grids of the Digital Narrative. I am on a path of exploring the new post-digital and post-human cybernetic systems that house and incentivize complex human interactions instead of waiting for a replaceable individual to feed the algorithm loop with the superficial binary inputs.

Domestic Travelers aims to create a cybernetic system that combines digital and analog media, enabling individuals to experience the lifespan of a relationship through possible collaboration, confrontation, compromise, deception, and sacrifice, using non-performative movements and sound. The project consists of three interconnected systems: the hidden soundscape that addresses the illusion of one continuous entity with constant collaborative movements (Undercurrent), a horizontal interface in the ambiguous form between a dining table and a switch with a pair of long strings which two individual can pull for control, communication, and exploration (Garden), and a vertical interface narrating a journey through digitally simulated space under physical influences (apart-ment). All three sections are intermingled through the discussion of chance, constant movement, and interpersonal power dynamics. 

Domestic Travelers
2026

Thesis project. Multi-person interactive installation with a sonic component, connected to a sound mixer and responsive digital environment.

Domestic Travelers creates a cybernetic system that combines digital and analog media. By interacting with two ropes, two or more participants move through shifting stages of a relationship, including collaboration, confrontation, compromise, deception, and separation. Through non-performative movement and sound, the work transforms simple physical actions into an unstable feedback loop between bodies, objects, and digital systems.

Domestic Travelers: Digital Environment and Sound Demo 
2026

Video documentation of the project’s responsive digital environment and sonic system.

Domestic Travelers consists of three interconnected systems: Undercurrent, a hidden soundscape that suggests the illusion of one continuous entity through collaborative movement; Garden, a horizontal interface between a dining table and a switch, where two participants pull long ropes to negotiate control, communication, and exploration; and apart-ment, a vertical interface that stages a journey through a digitally simulated space shaped by physical input. Together, the three sections explore chance, constant movement, and interpersonal power dynamics.

Domestic Travelers: Interaction Demo 
2026

Participants stand at opposite ends of the table and interact with two ropes. Their pulling motions shift the tilt of the tabletop while also activating the bowing, striking, and plucking of a stainless steel kettle inspired by the waterphone instrument. The interaction requires coordination between both participants, turning control into a shared and unstable negotiation.

Cardoon
2024
Found cabinet, 3D-printed components, wool felt, spray paint, linear actuators, nails, cast silicone, sponge.

A sound-sensitive interactive installation that transforms a found cabinet into a reactive organism. Inspired by the cardoon flower, the work conceals nails beneath soft felt and silicone surfaces, allowing aggression to emerge through fragile, bodily forms. It explores forced identities, disconnected physical presence, silenced screams, and the unstable threshold between protection and threat.

Prion
2025
Arduino-controlled interactive mechanical installation, UE5 interactive open-world environment, two-channel live video display.

Prion is inspired by years of hiking and uncanny encounters with deer that seemed to return the viewer’s gaze, as well as Chronic Wasting Disease, sometimes called “Zombie Deer Disease.” The work explores autonomy, Otherness, the Uncategorizable, and the construction of home and self. Through a mechanical interface, a simulated landscape, and live video feedback, the project stages a shifting relationship between control, embodiment, and surveillance, extending the thesis concepts of Transparent Machines and Hollow Bodies.

50 Feet Above the Ground
2024
Drone and computer vision video installation.

50 Feet Above the Ground begins with a simple curiosity: to remap a disappeared home once located roughly 50 feet above the ground. The work explores forms of home, the activation of somatic memory, the tension between retrospection and escape, and the deaths and burials of both space and the observing subject. In the videos, walking becomes a drawing tool, a narrative device, a bridge between space and time, and a medium of (dis)communication.

Song of Myself (still)
2025
Experimental performance with installation and digital projection. Approximately 7 minutes.

Inspired by and directly quoting Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, 51, this work is a journey toward revealing embodied multitudes: the seeming contradictions that clash and coexist within a single living individual. Through systems connecting the performer’s limbs to lighting and objects, the work creates a hybrid human-machine existence that extends and transforms organic movement.

Stop-motion video of legs over time, showing bruises fading and returning from a fixed perspective.