User:XiaoXuan Soda/T2 Assessment

Before I came to XPUB and Why I choose here

Before coming to XPUB, I studied photography at a media university in China. Our teachers mainly focused on documentary photography, especially around social issues, and encouraged us to use photography as a way to promote social change.

One of our senior alumni, Wang Jiuliang, made two documentaries—Beijing Besieged by Waste and Plastic China—both of which had a significant impact on the development of environmental policies in China. This deeply affected me and made me realize that certain forms of effort can indeed lead to tangible results.

However, after four years of studying photography, I began to feel the limitations of the medium itself. As a result, I started shifting towards more interactive and installation-based practices to express my ideas.

When I read about the XPUB programme, I noticed that people were working across a wide range of media and approaches. It made me feel that I could also explore beyond a single medium—this is why I decided to come here.

Sum up！📸💡⚡️👷🏗️ About my work after come to the XPUB!!!

The first interview in Rotterdam at night

About the worm radio project - Rotterdam night interview

I believe that Rotterdam itself is a huge writing machine. People living here constantly create stories. So I decided to interview those who are still active on the streets of this city at night, asking them for their views on the city and their stories.

During this process, I also noticed that there are many homeless people in this city, which sparked my interest in their situation. I began to wonder how they survive, why they have become homeless, and whether their condition is the result of structural issues, government policies, or personal circumstances.

These questions drew me into further investigation, which eventually led to the following development (see point 6).

Link：SI28-Radio-Worm/Week4

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Writing Machine

Manually operating the plotter to draw circles and rectangles

HP-7475-A3 plotter running a chart drawing demo

A test image used for plotting, photographed at Het Loo Palace

🖨️❗️🖨️❗️🖨️❗️🖨️❗️🖨️⚠️🖨️⚠️🖨️⚠️🖨️⚠️

Test result of Het Loo Palace

This is a part I really love. It allowed me to establish a connection with physical objects, and these plotters are rarely seen in China. Back when this type of equipment was more widespread, it was still quite rare and typically only found in research institutions. So I had never encountered such machines before, and I’m full of curiosity about them.At the same time, I’m truly amazed that humans could invent such a delicate and ingenious device. When I sent it the photo I took at Het Loo Palace and asked it to draw it, I didn’t expect the result to be so beautiful—the combination of points and lines forming a kind of density on the paper.

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Audiences on Public-Event

About that wood installation art work I made

This work becomes a way for me to reflect on and express my understanding of Rotterdam’s multicultural condition. This was my first time presenting an installation work in a group exhibition. The vibe here was great, and the audience engaged thoughtfully with each artist’s work.

I really value this kind of opportunity to share my work in a public setting. Being able to have my work seen and experienced by others made me feel genuinely happy.

Link：Projects SI 28/Water Vessel Dwelling in Temporality

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Screen shot of picture and Videos

Record picture & video of SI28 Public-Event

During the public event, I took on a documentary role, producing a visual record of each work through both photography and video.

Link：Pictures of SI28

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In the name of XPUB

Amazine

With everyone’s help, I gradually completed my introduction to CSS and designed my own section of the SI28 publication. I personally really like this design!

Try the directory tree script

img {
    float: left !important;
    margin: 10px 10px 10px 0; /* 左边留空间让文字环绕 */
    max-width: 60%;
    height: auto;
}

.clear { clear: both; 
}

.box {
    background-color: #f0f0f0; /* 底色 */
    background-image: radial-gradient(circle, #ccc 10%, transparent 10%);
    background-size: 20px 20px; /* 控制斑点大小和间距 */
}

@page:left {
	@top-center {
		content: '';
		margin-top: 8mm;
		width: 100%;
		border-bottom: 1.2pt solid black;
	}
	@bottom-left {
    content: 'Public-Event';
		font-size: 7pt;
		margin-bottom: 9.5mm;
		white-space: nowrap;
	}
	@bottom-center {
		content: '';
		border-top: 1.2pt solid black;
		width: 100%;
	}
	@bottom-right {
    content: 'Let us unite!';
		font-size: 7pt;
		font-style: italic;
		margin-bottom: 9.5mm;
		white-space: nowrap;
	}
}

@page:right {
	@top-center {
		content: '';
		margin-top: 8mm;
		width: 100%;
		border-bottom: 1.2pt solid black;
	}
	@bottom-left {
    content: 'Public-Event';
		font-size: 7pt;
		margin-bottom: 9.5mm;
		white-space: nowrap;
	}
	@bottom-center {
		content: '';
		width: 100%;
		border-top: 1.2pt solid black;
	}
	@bottom-right {
    content: 'In the name of XPUB';
		font-size: 7pt;
		margin-bottom: 9.5mm;
		white-space: nowrap;
	}
}

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python generate .html

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Python Practice ! ! !

Use python generating html file and directory tree.

I followed what I learned and made it work ! ! !

Although I’m not personally very interested in HTML and CSS, I still engaged with the practice and learned a lot from it.

To be honest, working with HTML and CSS can play an important role in building a more decentralized web. It allows individuals to freely publish content within their own or collectively created platforms, without being subject to censorship or evaluated by capital-driven standards of value. I think this is very important.

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About our（Ema and Me） IR signal test and prototype project

Inspiration

The idea started from the workshop classes host by Dorian, which focused on file transmission. At that time, I began thinking about how I could use a micro-controller development board, like Arduino, to make some kind of file transfer system, and also make the process a bit more interesting.

Then I thought about using infrared signals. We could build a simple pair of transmitter and receiver, and test what happens when someone walks through the space where the signal is being transmitted. Would the signal get blocked? And would the receiver produce some unexpected or interesting feedback?

The project comes from this simple curiosity—how human presence can unintentionally interfere with a system like this.

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Theme

Human as Noise

This project reframes the human body not as a user of technology, but as a source of noise within a technical system. As participants move through the space, their presence unintentionally interferes with signal transmission, producing errors, distortions, and disruptions. Rather than intentional interaction, the work emphasizes unconscious influence, positioning the human as an unpredictable variable. In this sense, the body becomes part of the system’s instability, revealing how technological processes are continuously shaped by factors beyond control. The work challenges the assumption that humans operate technology, suggesting instead that they are embedded within its fluctuating conditions.

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Invisible Infrastructure

Contemporary life is structured by invisible technological infrastructures such as wireless signals, data transmission, and network connectivity. These systems operate continuously yet remain largely imperceptible. This work seeks to render such infrastructures visible by translating signal behavior into perceivable outputs. By exposing moments when transmission fails or fluctuates, it reveals the hidden presence of these systems in everyday space. The project invites viewers to reconsider their relationship to technology—not as something external or tool-like, but as an ambient condition that surrounds and shapes human experience without direct awareness.

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Fragility of Communication

Digital communication is often perceived as stable, seamless, and reliable. However, this work highlights its inherent fragility. Through the use of infrared transmission, the system becomes sensitive to minor disruptions caused by human movement, resulting in corrupted or incomplete data transfer. These failures expose the instability underlying seemingly precise technological processes. By foregrounding error, delay, and distortion, the project questions the assumption of perfect communication. It suggests that all transmission is contingent, mediated, and vulnerable, and that meaning itself may be altered through interference.

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Ethics of Technological Systems

The project raises questions about the ethical relationship between humans and technological systems. If human presence can unintentionally disrupt communication, it also suggests that systems may influence human behavior in equally subtle ways. This reciprocal relationship complicates the idea of control: are humans directing technology, or are they being shaped by it? By positioning the body within a network of signals and responses, the work encourages reflection on agency, responsibility, and awareness. It opens a space to consider how invisible systems structure perception, behavior, and interaction in contemporary life.

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System, Space, and Interaction

The work constructs a spatial system in which signal transmission defines an invisible architecture. As participants move through this field, their bodies alter the behavior of the system, transforming space into an active medium. Interaction is not based on deliberate input but on presence itself. The installation thus shifts from object-based viewing to environmental experience, where space, body, and technology are intertwined. It proposes a dynamic relationship in which the environment is continuously reconfigured through movement, emphasizing process over fixed form.

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Future of the project

Link：Sending text over infrared

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Photography Exhibition in Wuhan, China

Link：LANDSCAPE ISSUE

At the end of 2025, I was invited to participate in the photography exhibition Landscape Issue, held at the Wuhan Image Center for one month. The exhibition aimed to explore the expressive dilemmas faced by contemporary Chinese landscape photography during its transitional period. As someone living abroad, I contributed a distinct perspective, offering viewers a viewpoint shaped by distance and displacement.

As a resident of Rotterdam, a city shaped by migration, I continuously experience a state where loneliness and freedom coexist. From this position, I begin to observe the fluidity of identity and belonging.

This work takes the frequent fog in Rotterdam as its point of departure, approaching it as both a symbolic climatic condition and a visual mechanism. Under the influence of fog, the city’s normally legible spatial order is destabilized: streets, buildings, and light sources enter an ambiguous state between appearance and disappearance. Through moving images, I document this visual uncertainty, attempting to translate the migrant experience—of being visible/invisible, included/excluded—into a perceptible spatial condition.

In this process, the city is no longer treated as a fixed backdrop, but as an event continuously rewritten by climate and time. The work considers how individuals reposition themselves within this unstable perceptual environment, forming new experiential relations between disorientation and immersion.

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About the continue of the homeless research project

Following Steve’s suggestion, I went to Pauluskerk, located just south of Rotterdam Centraal Station. The space functions as a support centre for people experiencing homelessness, offering food, clothing, social interaction, and guidance on accessing work.

Over time, I returned there repeatedly, gradually situating myself within this environment. At one point, I also had a meal distributed by volunteers, which became a moment of informal exchange and conversation. I spoke with people from a wide range of backgrounds—American, British, Bulgarian, Romanian, Latvian, Italian, Polish—whose trajectories had converged in this space.

Through these encounters, a recurring narrative emerged: a sense of systemic failure. Many articulated that their basic rights were not being adequately protected, and that they were subject to forms of unequal treatment. What complicates this further is that most of them are EU citizens, actively seeking employment, having come to the Netherlands with the expectation of earning a wage sufficient to sustain their families.

Rather than isolated personal misfortune, these stories point toward broader structural conditions—raising questions about mobility, labour, and the limits of social support systems within the EU context.

Link：Rotterdam Homeless Research Project

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📡About my workshop plan

This workshop takes infrared communication as its primary medium, guiding participants to start from the most fundamental unit of communication—the signal—and gradually develop an understanding of how modern communication systems are constructed. Through hands-on practice, participants will build a decentralized, short-range communication network. The project integrates three layers—encoding, transmission, and perception—using Arduino-based infrared modules to send and receive information, which is further extended into relay-based, multi-node communication.

In terms of content, the workshop introduces multiple encoding systems, including ASCII, Morse code, and binary encoding, alongside real-world infrared communication protocols such as NEC and RC5. Through these systems, participants will understand how abstract symbols are translated into physical signals. Building on this foundation, the workshop simulates scenarios of network disruption—such as protests or wartime conditions—to explore low-tech, decentralized approaches to emergency communication.

Link：Infrared Commons: Reconstructing Communication in Network Blackout Conditions

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