HKUST(GZ) CMA Presents Six Works at the Ars Electronica 2026 Campus Exhibition
***Sensing the unseen through gaze, touch, writing, robotics, and generative systems***
From 8 to 13 September 2026, the Computational Media and Arts (CMA) Thrust at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) presents six artworks at the Ars Electronica Campus Exhibition in Linz, Austria. The exhibition will take place at Hörsaal E (H8.EG.04), Kunstuniversität Linz (University of Arts Linz), Hauptplatz 8, Ground Floor (EG), 4020 Linz, Austria. This marks the fourth consecutive year that CMA student works have been presented on this international media arts platform. (For info, please visit our webpage: Click here)
Presented under the curatorial theme "Reality Flux: Sensing the Unseen," the exhibition brings together interactive installations, generative sculpture, robotic art, multi-channel moving image, and interactive textiles. Across the six works, acts of looking, touching, writing, whispering, and generating become ways of sensing forces that ordinarily remain beyond direct perception.
Since its founding in 1979, Ars Electronica has brought together artists, scientists, and technologists to examine the changing relationships among media art, digital technology, and society. In 2026, CMA enters this conversation through a reality that is contingent, relational, and continually in flux. Here, the unseen is not merely concealed; it is structurally inaccessible, emerging only through exchanges among bodies, machines, materials, and environments.
Within "Reality Flux: Sensing the Unseen," artificial intelligence, robots, algorithms, and sensors do not operate as autonomous authors. They serve as intermediaries within relational systems. A visitor's gaze, touch, gesture, voice, or movement can alter a work as it unfolds. Meaning is not fixed in advance; it is negotiated and co-produced in the moment of participation.
Artwork Highlights
1. "The Unseen Realm" - Jue Wang, supervised by Clea von Chamier-Waite
"The Unseen Realm" is an interactive projection installation driven by real-time eye tracking. A visitor's gaze, saccades, and blinks perturb a virtual cosmos of 64,000 particles while simultaneously reshaping generative cosmic textures projected across the installation surface.
The project began with an abandoned quarry in Dongguan, China. Through on-site scanning, image capture, and algorithmic reconstruction, the artist connects the geological traces of industrial activity with cosmic forces such as dark matter and dark energy. Once the visitor's eye enters the system, looking is no longer passive: eye and cosmos affect one another and jointly produce the work's continuously shifting reality.
2. "Touch Our Scars" - Yufan Li and Qing Yang; Yufan Li supervised by Kang Zhang
"Touch Our Scars" uses textiles, bodies, and an interactive system to explore trauma as a non-linguistic, embodied experience. The installation comprises two interactive textiles informed by collective trauma reports and nine touchable works developed from individual sensations of trauma.
Sharp, rigid, and physically resistant materials are woven into traditional textile structures. Visitors may approach, observe, linger, withdraw, or reach out to touch the surfaces. Rather than turning suffering into spectacle, the work asks audiences to confront the hesitation, responsibility, and potential transformation involved in touching another person's scars.
3. "Becoming Space" - Xinyu Ma and Hengyu Meng supervised by Clea von Chamier-Waite and Hungbo Fu
Comprising three 3D-printed resin sculptures, generative AI processes, and moving image, "Becoming Space" draws on the human-animal transformations of Ovid's Metamorphoses to reconsider identity, embodiment, and power under contemporary technological conditions.
Text prompts, three-dimensional generative models, algorithms, machines, and materials all participate in shaping the sculptural forms. Human and animal bodies no longer retain stable boundaries but pass into one another through an ongoing process of transformation. Generative AI is positioned not simply as a tool for depicting a predetermined image, but as a participant in an open-ended process of becoming.
4. "BruSHŪ" - Tiancheng Liu and Nicolò Merendino; Tiancheng Liu supervised by Kang Zhang
Chinese calligraphy is commonly encountered as a silent, finished mark, yet the approach, hesitation, turn, contact, lift, and re-entry that constitute the act of writing largely disappear from the final trace. "BruSHŪ" transforms a sensor-embedded brush into a cross-modal perceptual instrument, capturing orientation, motion energy, and the distance between brush tip and paper in real time.
These signals are translated into sound and evolving visual textures, allowing the tacit rhythms and decisions of writing to become perceptible. The work neither evaluates the quality of the calligraphy nor attempts to reconstruct the resulting marks. Instead, it turns the brush from a tool for producing traces into an interface for sensing embodied knowledge.
5. "I Tell the Moon My Secret and the Moon Tells Me Yours" - Zoe Qi-Jing Li, supervised by Clea von Chamier-Waite
In "I Tell the Moon My Secret and the Moon Tells Me Yours," visitors are invited to speak a secret into a microphone. Their voices are converted into waveforms, coordinates, and robotic movements. Using the Moon as its only light source, a robotic arm then traces these encoded secrets through long-exposure photography.
Even when the robot executes each trajectory with precision, the final image remains dependent on lunar phase, cloud cover, air quality, and whether the Moon enters the camera's field of view. The natural environment becomes an active and uncontrollable collaborator rather than a passive backdrop. Whether the secret appears or dissolves into the night, it remains secret - translated into another language.
6. "KARMA" - Hao Li, supervised by Pan Hui
"KARMA" is a multi-channel audiovisual installation that approaches generative artificial intelligence through the artist's framework of sensory projection. It imagines high-dimensional latent space as an "algorithmic cosmos" composed of vast datasets and innumerable possibilities. Human prompts, parameter settings, and artistic decisions intervene in this field, guiding latent possibilities into perceptible images and sounds.
Across multiple screens, real-world city footage, AI-generated imagery, text, detection boxes, and granular-synthesis soundscapes layer, dissolve, and recombine. The title points to cyclical causality and feedback within generative systems. The work asks how reality, aesthetics, and meaning are produced when human perception continually shapes algorithms, while algorithms in turn reorganize how reality is perceived.
From the Guangzhou Cross-Campus Exhibition to Linz
The six works selected for "Reality Flux: Sensing the Unseen" were previously presented as part of the 2026 Second Cross-Campus Exhibition in Guangzhou, "Symbiotic Signals: Entangled Perceptions and Algorithms." The exhibition connected artistic, design, and technological practices across HKUST and HKUST(GZ), providing a platform for cross-campus exchange, public presentation, and the continued development of student work.
As the projects move from Guangzhou to Linz, they are not being transferred as fixed outcomes. Each work continues to evolve through a new venue, new technical conditions, and new relationships with audiences. In this sense, the transition itself becomes part of the reality in flux that the exhibition sets out to examine.
CMA's Continuing Commitment to the Ars Electronica Campus Exhibition
Since 2023, the CMA Thrust at HKUST(GZ) has maintained an active presence at the Ars Electronica Campus Exhibition, treating the international platform as an important part of its support for student-led artistic practice, interdisciplinary research, and global exchange.
Guided by the strategic vision of CMA Thrust Acting Head Prof. Pan Hui and former Thrust Head Prof. Kang Zhang, "Reality Flux: Sensing the Unseen" is curated by CMA faculty members Clea von Chamier-Waite (lead), Ingeborg Reichle, and James She. The curatorial team will accompany the participating artists to Linz, supporting the presentation of their work and its engagement with an international audience.
CMA is one of four Thrusts within the Information Hub at HKUST(GZ). Its research and practice span augmented and virtual reality art, AI art, robotic art, sonic arts, games, design, data visualization, human-computer interaction, computer graphics, and moving image. By translating research methods into artistic experiences that can be publicly encountered and activated, CMA continues to explore how emerging technologies reshape relationships among people, bodies, society, and the environment.
Event Information
Exhibition: Reality Flux: Sensing the Unseen
Platform: Ars Electronica Campus Exhibition 2026
Dates: 8-13 September 2026
Venue: Hörsaal E (H8.EG.04)
Kunstuniversität Linz (University of Arts Linz)
Hauptplatz 8, Ground Floor (EG)
4020 Linz, Austria
Media, Partnership, and General Enquiries
Contact: Emily Liu | Email: cmat@hkust-gz.edu.cn