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Preface

The entry of my graduation proposal will be a Buddha machine, a music box for meditation. It was sacred but cheap, industrial yet transcended.

There is a 24/7 sound in my house—ambiguous, genderless, looping "Amitabha" endlessly. This is my mother's machine. She once worked on the factory assembly lines; now, she uses this cheap plastic box to "accumulate merit."

Before the graduation proposal, I need to find the clue from my Xpub1 practices, tracing the methodology and topics in the past one year.

In short, I am clear that I want to find the cracks, the glitches, the moments where we can insert our own meanings.

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Relevant Works

SI#25 SOUND_OF_MAKING

In SI25, sound was the tool to explore invisible discipline.

Broadcast#3: Underwater_Exploration

> Field recording as storytelling

Using water as a metaphor to explore systems. Collaging diverse audio samples to investigate the textures of aquatic environments, finding the materialization, fluidity and resistance of the sound.

Key Connection✎:

Sound collage, archival practice

Broadcast#5: Protocol_for_Bad_Customer_Service

Scripts.exe

> Script-based Narrative

Sound in the call center scripts, is repetitive and systemic. This project constructed a fictional space transforming protocols into narrative scripts.

Key Connection✎:

Script-based narrative, fictioning, storytelling

Radio Worm: The Guideline to Shadows' Mindscape

Poster.png

A radio drama about the Chinese art system. Exploring algorithmic intrusion and escape.

Key Connection✎:

fiction writing, role play, broadcasting

SI#26 DECLARATION

[Key_Connection]: Interactive Interface

Face_Notation

Prototype_v1.jpg

It is an interactive website that transforms the bodily markers of Chinese physiognomy into a music system.

Users adjust browser windows (CSS Grid), turning the disciplined body into a musical instrument.

Key Connection✎:

interactive web interface (CSS Grid, Web Audio API), real-time sound generation

SI#27 See you many times!

The Observer Clock

Installation in telcom museum

Documentation

The Observer Clock

"Every blink counts. The more you blink, the faster the clock runs."

The Observer Clock transforms our most unconscious body language—blinking—into a direct conversation with time itself. This interactive installation consists of a blinking-detection clock where visitors' blinks literally accelerate the passage of time, revealing how our attention speaks in ways we rarely notice. It is also a symbol of invisible labor. I also used the weasy print to documentation the whole research process and the basis mechanism.

Key Connection✎:

installation, archiving

Labor + body + tech + care + spiritual = ???

Glitch Sutra for Displaced Bodies

/// Repetitive Technologies as Meaning-Making Tools ///

I am researching how displaced individuals use repetitive technologies to construct personal meaning systems when structural conditions have exhausted their bodies and eroded their agency.

My research object is the Buddha machine (念佛机)—cheap, mass-produced devices that loop Buddhist chants. My mother, a former factory worker in Shenzhen, uses one daily to "deliver sentient beings to the afterlife" and "accumulate merit". This embodies a paradox: the repetitive mechanism that disciplines bodies on assembly lines becomes a tool for spiritual repair at home. Repetition-as-labor transforms into repetition-as-healing.

Buddha machine - the interface of transcendence.

Why Shenzhen and Buddha machines?

Shenzhen produces most of the world's cheap electronics (including various Buddha machines) while being China's most overworked city. Many people now turn to repetitive technologies for relief from spiritual exhaustion. These individuals can neither return to their past lives nor fully enter new systems—they exist in a floating, suspended state, much like the "sentient beings (ghosts)" the sutra player is meant to deliver.

When people are structurally marginalized, they find "soft interfaces"—interpretable, malleable spaces within rigid systems—to insert their own meanings. Through researching Buddha machines, I discovered a paradox: this cheap, glitch-prone, lo-fi device, precisely because of its simplicity and imperfection, leaves abundant space for interpretation. Glitch is not a defect. Glitch is an opportunity.

Key Question: Can repetitive technologies loosen the framework of reality and become tools for exercising minimal agency? What conditions enable this transformation?

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Prototype

Media Archaeology + Field Research + Workshop

I attempt to let phenomena speak for themselves. My fieldwork includes embedded observation in Huaqiangbei electronics market, temples, and acupuncture clinics. I trace the production chains of electronic sutra players and use embodied methods through my own body to understand "displacement" and "exhaustion."

Prototype

I developed three prototypes to test and verify my research mechanisms:

Instant Faith Workshop

instant_faith_zines

Tests how participation transforms everyday coping mechanisms into "beliefs." Through simple questionnaires and mutual questioning, it explores the conditions that make arbitrary practices feel legitimate.

Bladder Runner (Field Diary)

Field Diary

A field diary that uses embodied metaphor to understand displacement. It translates internal experiences from Shenzhen fieldwork (pressure, control, release) into analytical insights.

• On the assembly line, my mother's body didn't belong to her—she learned to "hold it in."
• As an immigrant, I found myself in the same state.
• The Buddha machine is just another kind of bladder, holding prayers and pain we cannot release.

Mundane Spiritual Interface Mapping

The Mapping

Visualizes collective patterns, collecting data on how people use technological-spiritual-bodily hybrid tools today. It makes visible the shared strategies people employ when seeking meaning through technology.

They revealed a consistent pattern—repetitive technologies originally designed to discipline bodies can be repurposed into tools for constructing personal meaning.

The key is finding "soft interfaces" that are technically rigid but interpretively open.

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What I'm trying

1. Thesis Outline

My thesis traces how displaced bodies construct meaning through repetitive technological interaction across three chapters:

• Chapter 1: Formation examines historical conditions—my mother's trajectory from factory worker to spiritual practitioner—that open interpretive space for these practices.
• Chapter 2: Operation analyzes how these meaning-making processes work, drawing from readings, fieldwork, and workshop findings.
• Chapter 3: Transmission explores what patterns pass between generations—not specific beliefs, but methodologies of survival.

The thesis provides the analytical framework; the installation and publication create embodied experiences where participants feel these processes themselves.

2. Web-based Interactive Installation

I plan to create a web-based interactive installation that recreates this floating, suspended state. Users explore 4-6 abstract scenes (hometown/factory/city/home/temple...) via non-pointer interactions. Each scene and objects within scenes trigger layers of repetitive sound/narrative—factory noise, chanting, ambient soundscape—and fragmented narratives.

The installation embodies three core concepts:

• THE LOOP (Repetition): If input stops, the system decays into noise.
• SUSPENSION (Stuckness): Floating in a system that promises transcendence but offers endless continuation.
• THE MATERIALITY OF SOUND: Sound creates an invisible liminal space where meaning can be reconstructed.

This interactive experience attempts to pose the question: In a floating state, can one find meaning and belief in self-identity?

3. Interactive Publication: "Glitch Sutra"

A text-adventure style narrative publication exploring displacement and meaning-making, based on the web installation, fieldwork, workshop findings, and thesis research. It will exist in both print and digital versions, functioning as both documentation and a standalone work that allows readers to experience the suspended state through their own choices.

TIMELINE: 4 MONTHS

• Month 1: Deep reading (cybernetics, sound studies, labor theory) + visual concept development + prototype "Infinite Scroll" (basic navigation mechanism)
• Month 2: Blender content generation for 4-6 scenes + sound experiments (layering factory noise with chanting) + initial fieldwork analysis
• Month 3: Web installation integration + workshop testing (testing "suspension" atmosphere with participants) + thesis writing (Chapters 1-2)
• Month 4: Final UI polish + interactive publication design and production + thesis completion (Chapter 3) + documentation

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References

Artistic

aaajiao, Deep Simulator — game installation, exploring entrapment in digital loops, minimal interaction creating self-identity

Reading

Pun Ngai, Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace (2005) — Chinese labor and bodily discipline

David Palmer, Qigong Fever: Body, Science, and Utopia in China (2007) — Technologized spirituality in contemporary China

Li Yuhang, Becoming Guanyin: Artistic Devotion of Buddhist Women in Late Imperial China (2020) — Women's Buddhist practices and meaning-making

Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (2003) — Sound technologies and listening practices

Simon O'Sullivan, "From Magic and Myth-Work to Care and Repair" (2019) — Art as repair methodology

░░░🍵 Thank you 🍵░░░