Me and my partner Guanjian She collaborated on this project, We Chat. We sent a JPEG file of one of my works back-and-forth to each other on the Chinese social media app WeChat 405 times.
The first piece of text in this work was selected from original conversations between me and others on WeChat. It was translated into random languages 100 times on google translate. The later three pieces were selected from the translating process.
Artworks that are stored as digital files have often been seen as incomplete or substitutes of actual prints and physical objects. Manipulating digital files in photoshop is also usually viewed as less legit than manipulating a physical object.
By pushing the digital files to decay in a “natural” way, I tried to prove the existence of the physicality of digital files, and its potential to become aesthetically appealing, in a similar way as we talk about the physicality of films or artworks as physical objects. Under the random and violent process of mechanical reproduction, new forms and meanings appeared and disappeared on the surface of both the JPEG files and the texts.
