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Areas of Focus
Pictured is a half-body side profile of the artist HE Zike. She looks over to her left towards a horizon of tree-covered hills.Pictured is a half-body side profile of the artist HE Zike. She looks over to her left towards a horizon of tree-covered hills.

Portrait of Eyebeam alum artist, HE Zike. Courtesy of the artists.

With HE Zike
FeedOral History
Edited: September 26, 2024

How do you characterize the media you work in?

I have worked with video, writing and installation, sometimes also with computer programs, including machine learning. 

How does your practice engage with technology?

I want to find a personal approach to thinking about our technologized society and express how technology has changed the ways we are living. I’m particularly interested in the ways that personal and collective memory reside in technological infrastructure, and how new technologies affect our day-to-day lives, including the emotional connections we make. Narrative is often central to my approach. In one project, I made a website that was run by a program that automatically generated stories that revolved around two protagonists. The protagonists might be friends, enemies, or lovers—they changed all the time. Together they swam through a sea of information. The program crafted its narratives by learning from international news with a language model, which was part of an effort to use technology to transform documentary or journalistic material into something fragmentary, error-filled, or fictional. This project has somewhat inspired me in constructing Random Access. 

A Large concrete structure jutting out from a tree-covered hill. The street surrounding this facility is neatly lined with trees. Nighttime.

HE Zike, RANDOM ACCESS 乱码城市, 2023. Still from Video, 14 Minutes, 20 Seconds. Supported by the 5th VH AWARD, and presented by the Hyundai ArtLab, Hyundai Motor Group. © 2023 HE Zike. Courtesy of the Artist.

You were a finalist for the 5th VH Award. Can you tell me a bit about the work that garnered you this honor?

I titled Random Access after a mode of reading and writing data where you can access any datum in an equal amount of time. The video is based on my research into the cloud and its infrastructures, as well as my personal experience. It’s set in Guiyang, a southwest city of China, a rising data capital, and my hometown. In the fictional narrative, which was partly inspired by the story of my parents and the nature of the city, the datacenter breaks down. The person who maintains the server becomes a passenger in a retired taxi driver’s car, traveling around the city with her—and from the past to the future. The video gets into matters of memory and deep time in technological infrastructure. 

What was your focus during your time at Eyebeam? Was there a culminating project?

When the residency began, I was at the very beginning of the whole project. I was still doing location scouting for the film. As the residency progressed, each time I presented my ideas to the guest visitors and other VH Award finalists, it helped me to clarify my ideas, which was very meaningful. We met almost every week, during which I worked on the script and began to make the video. 

Two people are sitting out in the edge of the woods, around a fire. The man is seated on a large smooth rock, holding a guitar on his lap, watching over the distance, while the woman looks into the fire.

HE Zike, RANDOM ACCESS 乱码城市, 2023. Still from Video, 14 Minutes, 20 Seconds. Supported by the 5th VH AWARD, and presented by the Hyundai ArtLab, Hyundai Motor Group. © 2023 HE Zike. Courtesy of the Artist.

How has dialogue or collaboration with Eyebeam artists and alumni factored into your work?

Through the program, we all built connections with one another and became friends, even without meeting in person. I hope to meet everyone in the future. We have a lot in common, like interests in narrative, virtual, or spiritual space; Asian history; local experiences; deep time; and technological environment and its social impact. I think the connection is very important. I was very impressed by that, and learned a lot from how everyone worked in each project that are in fact very different. Each artist shared a lot of location-based research, which helps me to view my practice in a wider scope. For me, the residency will certainly have a long-term influence.

How do you think about the role of the artist in society?

That’s a tough one. For me, being an artist is like being someone who probes the world and expands our perception. We’re like sensors.

ChangelogEdited: September 26, 2024Published: September 16, 2024

Eyebeam models a new approach to artist-led creation for the public good; we are a non-profit that provides significant professional support and money to exceptional artists for the realization of important ideas that wouldn’t exist otherwise. Nobody else is doing this.

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