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Urban research & interactive multimedia installation

Houchang Village: A Bubble City 泡泡后厂村
Goethe Institute (China), 2021






“Houchang Village: A Bubble City” focuses on the newly planned "silicon valley" in Beijing that raised concerns of displaced local communities; and institutionally unethical labor practices of the tech giants. The work deconstructs the physical and virtual space of Houchang Village from three levels, the urban physical space, the organizational structure of “Dachang” (IT giants), and the information cocoons or filter bubbles existed here and beyond. 

The seven bubbles suspended in mid-air are not only metamorphoses of the seven “Dachang/大厂” buildings , but also signifiers of their second identity, “algorithm-generated filter bubble creators”. The data of daily population movement, visualized physically in 3D space with 700 red lines connecting the bubble with the map of Beijing above symbolize the cyclical life trajectory of the employees and workers. Situated in an enclosed bubble structure, the viewer can roam, engage, and interact with multiple sensory experiences, and start to imagine or reinterpret Houchang Village through sounds, scenes, and over 30 interviews collected in nearly a year's fieldwork.

This work was realized with funding from the “Beijing 22” 2020 research project.

Selected press:

Visualizing Life Inside China’s Tech Bubbles, Sixtone, 2021

《泡泡后厂村》：北京故事，生活剧场与社交网的发生器, 布林客BLINK, 2021


Project concept & installation: 



Footage excerpt: