清影

Wang Melting: I was quite pleased to land on this title myself, as much of my work actually discusses the contemporary technological environment while incorporating the elements of plants and land you mentioned. At the same time, I hoped this title could reflect my own creative environment and bodily experience.
The phrase “you reap what you sow” (in Chinese: “planting melons and reaping melons, planting beans and reaping beans”) is something we\\\'ve been familiar with since childhood. It contains a perception of natural laws and is also a very linear causal experience. But this kind of experience isn\\\'t entirely the same as what we face in the current technological discourse dominated by artificial intelligence. Recently, I\\\'ve listened to quite a few podcasts on science and technology, and often hear this notion that technology itself is “uncontrollable.” Research into AI is more like planting a seed—you\\\'re not sure what you\\\'ll ultimately harvest; it needs time to slowly reveal its outcomes.

This is actually quite close to my own creative process. Often, most of the initial time is spent experimenting with various ideas amid uncertainty; things fail as I work, and then I start over. But these attempts themselves are like seeds I\\\'ve sown. It\\\'s only in the final stages that a relatively clear direction slowly emerges.
Additionally, my studio is in a semi-outdoor farmhouse courtyard. Working under such conditions has gotten me into the habit of checking the weather forecast. For instance, when it rains, I can\\\'t spray paint, and many painting works must wait for dry weather to continue. This way of working alongside nature constantly reminds me of land and farming experience. And simultaneously, we are facing a larger technological environment, needing to think about how the individual coexists with it. I feel the title “种瓜得豆 (zhòng guā dé dòu, meaning ‘Planting Melons and Reaping Beans’) ” aptly connects these layers together.

Wang Melting: I think the direction of technological development is actually moving toward a state closer to nature, or more organic—as if the outline of technological development increasingly resembles life itself. I feel this trend quite distinctly. For me, rather than moving forward with technology, it\\\'s more like I\\\'m searching backward from this trend for a certain state. Perhaps some of our earlier bodily experiences have been overlooked or overly negated when discussing technology and the future. So now I\\\'m focusing more on returning attention to perception itself, feeling things slowly and carefully.
I was born in a grassland town and have had a very direct perception of those relatively primal environments since childhood. I\\\'m also well aware that in those so-called purely primal environments, my own state of existence wasn\\\'t actually comfortable. But being completely surrounded by technology isn\\\'t what I want either, because both my creative work and life are inseparable from the perceptual dimension of the physical body. I feel that only when works and life can establish a connection with bodily sensation do I gain a sense of security.

Wang Melting: I am interested in technology itself, but I\\\'m not a so-called “geek” nor a tech worker; I haven\\\'t entered a very deep, professional level. Much of my creation is actually based more on everyday perception. Whether it\\\'s the experience of playing games or daily contact with routers and various signals, they are all very tangible things for me.
I feel these objects often exist in a relatively early and basic state within the current technological logic, yet they are the most direct points of contact between our bodies and technology. For me, these fundamental technological objects themselves form a kind of stimulus, sparking the desire to continue thinking and expressing.
I deliberately choose objects like routers, LED fans, solder, lenticular stickers—items closer to the “infrastructure” level of technology—and amplify their properties as mediums in the works. Simultaneously, on the viewing level, they also provide a relatively direct, accessible entry point for the audience.
Specifically regarding game controllers, for me, it\\\'s more of a body-related object. Game controllers are themselves a bionic structure, mimicking the gripping posture of the human hand in form—a very clear bodily interface. Therefore, when using it, I focus more on how it serves as a medium connecting bodily movement with technological systems.
The inspiration for lenticular stickers originally came from the code of the digital world in The Matrix. During a casual observation, I noticed these constantly shifting \\\"0\\\"s and \\\"1\\\"s looked like pairs of little eyes, as if the most basic elements of these programming languages themselves possessed a certain sense of life, capable of conversing with our real world.

Wang Melting: The starting point for the Welcome Stone series actually stems from a long-standing interest of mine: what things do we judge as \\\"natural objects\\\"? For example, a stone—if we can\\\'t identify any information or specific shape on it, it\\\'s usually considered a natural thing; but if we carve characters onto it, it becomes artificial again. So when I first started making Welcome Stone, I was thinking about whether I could treat it into a more ambiguous state, a coexistent state of \\\"both/and.\\\" And \\\"welcome stones\\\"—the act of \\\"welcoming\\\" itself carries a sense of \\\"responding.\\\"

A few years ago, visiting the Galileo Museum, I saw an exhibition hall displaying the early sprouts of science during the Renaissance. There was a medieval family painting that used a corrugated-like structure to depict two figures on the same surface: viewed straight on, it was a portrait of the male head; from another angle, it would transform into the female head. I realized then that this was actually an early lenticular structure. Looking back now, this experience also served as an inspiration for the Welcome Stone sculptures.

Wang Melting: This question actually goes back to a point we discussed earlier: the issue of how the individual coexists with a larger technological environment. When I, as an individual, feel changes in the surrounding macro-environment, I imagine myself as a small object, a sensor, or a microorganism. I\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'m simply receiving information, sensing the environment changing around me. At such moments, my first thought isn\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'t to change anything, but rather to adjust myself first, or to mutually adjust with the things I can directly touch. Combining man-made objects with natural materials like earth and wood is, from a creative perspective, an attempt to achieve such a state of balance.

Wang Melting: Because I actually have experience carving marble from before, and my mentor at the time told me something very important: you have to learn to \\\"read\\\" the stone. He meant that a stone isn\\\'t carved into a certain form because you initially intended it that way, but because in the process you sense a tendency within the stone itself, and you simply extract that tendency.
I think I extended a similar line of thought when making this series. These paintings are basically done on wooden panels. Initially, the most important thing for me was the state of the panel itself. Often, I\\\'d sit there first, clearing my mind, looking at it, and while looking, ideas for creation might emerge. This time, I first painted a camouflage base according to the wood grain, then filled and covered it with sand and soil. After that, I\\\'d \\\"read\\\" it to decide the next step. But in the specific operational process, there are many random elements because solder isn\\\'t a material easily controlled with precision. So usually, I can only paint while judging how it should develop next. Throughout the process, the general direction is relatively clear, but the specific forms often slowly generate during the operation.

Wang Melting: I think tin as a material is something in an intermediate state. On one hand, it\\\'s a natural metal material; on the other, in its current usage context, it\\\'s more associated with soldering electronic components and precision instruments. So for me, the material itself aligns quite well with my current creativedirection.
Of course, it does present certain difficulties in terms of control, but that also allows me to pursue a sense of randomness and freehand expressiveness. I myself don\\\'t really expect to completely control every aspect of a work. Like mentioned before, weather affects my creation; the texture and color of soil can\\\'t be precisely matched to the initial sketches either. So in such situations, I choose to relinquish a degree of control, slow down the pace, work a bit slower, and constantly adjust based on the state that has already formed in the moment.

Wang Melting: Yes, that\\\'s also one reason I chose to use camouflage. We initially imitated nature, drawing inspiration from animal survival strategies; later, camouflage entered the military field for concealment; then later, it entered pop culture and fashion contexts, instead becoming a kind of \\\"eye-catching\\\" visual form. So I feel camouflage itself is actually a quite multidimensional and contradictory pattern. It has been highly abstracted into an artificial visual structure, but its origin is always tied to nature.
My most basic idea was: if I use a natural material to re-simulate this state of \\\"the artificial simulating nature,\\\" could I establish a more entangled field situated between nature and artifice. I think this was also my initial logic when painting this series.

Wang Melting: My current working state is actually a back-and-forth process. Often, both sides are being considered simultaneously. I have computers at both home and studio, so the more ideal, common state is: half the time spent doing physical tests in the studio, the other half quietly sitting at the computer doing digital modeling and simulations. The two sides constantly adjust to each other, ultimately aiming to generate a physical body of work.
In this show, for the works involving 3D printing, I actually utilized a tree-like support structure that the printer itself generates to directly print \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\"plants.\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\" In this process, I only input the modeled parts for leaves or fruits. Based on these inputs, what kind of plant style is ultimately generated is not entirely controlled by me.
So there\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s quite a bit of trial and error involved, because I need to constantly adjust the settings for these \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\"leaves\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\" and \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\"fruits,\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\" testing repeatedly, until the finally generated printed form can fuse with the other physical parts in reality.

Wang Melting: This was actually somewhat serendipitous. When I tried to create plants purely through modeling, it felt somewhat like a thankless task. It seemed that directly utilizing this generative method would be more natural instead. Compared to me controlling and fabricating a plant form, this kind of generated structure is visually more direct. Simultaneously, it possesses its own aesthetic—its generative logic is similar to real plant structures but certainly not identical. For me, this state of being both close to nature and distinctly different from real plants is actually more ideal.

Wang Melting: For me, AI is like a free \\\"assistant\\\" or \\\"mysterious good friend.\\\" Anything I feel I\\\'m not particularly good at, I\\\'ll have it try for me, whether in life or creation. For instance, when I have ideas I don\\\'t fully understand or hit logical roadblocks, I chat with it. I find AI is actually more linear in logic than I am, so often it helps me organize. At any stage of creation, I try to discuss scattered questions with it. But by the final stage, I basically still use my own hands to complete things, at least at this current stage, because I feel that\\\'s more precise.
There\\\'s also a video installation in this show where I used AI to generate a cross-sectional structure of the hidden root system within soil. I thought the microscopic structures of roots and nervous systems looked very similar, so I had AI try merging them. I think this is a process requiring constant probing. If AI does things quickly and well, on one hand, it liberates my hands; simultaneously, it means a creative step gets filtered out by technology, so then I have to seek new gaps to engage in manual work.