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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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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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.

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📡About my workshop plan

Infrared Commons: Reconstructing Communication in Network Blackout Conditions

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I. Project Overview

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.

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II. Research Questions

This project examines both the technical structure of communication and its broader social implications. It begins by asking how meaning is encoded into signals, and what forms of abstraction and reduction occur in this process. The workshop also invites participants to consider how communication can be re-established using basic technologies when internet and mobile networks fail.

Through practical experimentation, participants will experience how noise, interference, and transmission errors affect the flow of information, and observe how messages evolve as they pass through multiple nodes. Furthermore, the project raises critical questions about power and technology: Who defines encoding systems? Can communication protocols be rewritten? Is decentralized communication truly feasible, and what are its limitations? These questions will be explored through both hands-on activities and group reflection.

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III. Workshop Objectives

The workshop operates across three dimensions: technical, cognitive, and creative. On a technical level, participants will learn how signals are transmitted through time-based and binary switching logic, gain familiarity with encoding methods such as ASCII, Morse code, and binary systems, and develop an understanding of real-world infrared communication protocols.

On a cognitive level, participants will build a holistic understanding of the communication process—encoding, transmission, and decoding—while experiencing how information is altered by noise and interference during transmission.

On a creative level, participants will be encouraged to design their own encoding systems (a “codebook”) and construct a temporary communication network through multi-node connections. This process fosters reflection on the relationships between communication, control, infrastructure, and power.

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IV. Participants

The workshop is open to participants from diverse backgrounds, including art, design, engineering, and social sciences. Participants will work in small groups of two to three people. Each group is free to choose their preferred communication methods, encoding systems, and combinations of input and output devices, resulting in diverse and distinct communication systems.

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V. Tools & Materials

Rather than prescribing a single technical approach, the workshop provides a range of input, transmission, and output devices, forming an open and flexible technical environment. Participants are encouraged to combine these modules to construct their own communication systems.

On the input side, participants may use buttons or keyboards for basic input, or incorporate sensors—such as light, distance, or sound sensors—to translate environmental changes into signals. Information is transmitted via infrared emitters and received through infrared receiver modules (such as VS1838 or TSOP series).

On the output side, information can be translated into multiple perceptual forms. It may be displayed visually through LEDs or OLED screens as text or graphics, represented numerically via seven-segment displays, or reconstructed as pixel-based images using LED matrices. Alternatively, it can be rendered as sound through buzzers or speakers. In extended configurations, information may also be expressed through light installations or haptic feedback (such as vibration). Through this diversity of outputs, participants will come to understand that communication is not only about transmitting information, but also about how that information is perceived and interpreted.

The Emergence of Signals (30 min)

The workshop begins with the most fundamental concept of communication: the signal. Participants will be introduced to how information can be expressed through physical media, as well as the distinction between analog and digital signals. In this phase, the basic principles of infrared communication are explained, focusing on how simple on/off states can form the smallest units of information. Through a hands-on exercise—such as transmitting messages via LED blinking—participants will attempt to communicate without any predefined encoding system, allowing them to directly experience the relationship between signal and meaning.

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Encoding Systems (45 min)

Building on this foundation, the workshop introduces encoding systems that structure raw signals into interpretable information. Participants will explore Morse code as a time-based encoding method, as well as ASCII as a symbolic encoding system. Through practical exercises, participants will use buttons to transmit simple Morse messages (such as SOS), and keyboards to encode and send textual information via infrared signals. This stage highlights how encoding enables communication to move from abstract signals to shared meaning.

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Custom Encoding (45 min)

After learning standard encoding systems, participants will be invited to design their own communication rules. This phase emphasizes the openness and subjectivity of encoding: participants may develop systems based on rhythm and timing, binary logic, or visual structures such as pixel patterns. Each group will produce its own “codebook,” defining how information is encoded and decoded within their system. Beyond technical experimentation, this process foregrounds the idea that encoding is not fixed, but constructed—and therefore open to reinterpretation.

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Multi-node Communication Network (60 min)

In this stage, all participants are organized into a chain-based communication network, where messages are transmitted across multiple nodes (e.g., A → B → C → D). Direct long-distance communication is not allowed; instead, information must pass through each intermediary node. Participants can choose to either forward signals directly or decode and re-encode them before passing them on. Through this process, participants will observe how information transforms during transmission—whether it becomes distorted, simplified, or delayed—and gain insight into the structural dynamics of distributed communication networks.

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Noise and Interference (30 min)

Once the network is established, instability is introduced to simulate real-world communication conditions. This includes environmental light interference (such as phone flashlights or ambient light), physical obstructions (bodies or objects), and intentional encoding errors. Participants are challenged to continue transmitting information under these disrupted conditions, experiencing firsthand the fragility and unpredictability of communication systems in the presence of noise.

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Scenario Simulation (30 min)

In the final stage, the workshop shifts into a scenario-based exercise, such as simulating a “network blackout” or a “protest environment.” Within this context, participants must develop communication strategies, organize their network structure, and successfully transmit a critical piece of information under constrained conditions. This stage transforms the technical exercises into a situated practice, where communication becomes not only a technical process but also a matter of coordination, strategy, and collective decision-making.

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七、输入 / 输出设计（关键亮点）

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在本工作坊中，信息的设计被视为一个开放系统。发送端可以采用基于时间的编码方式，例如按键长短或节奏组合，也可以采用符号编码（如 ASCII 或莫尔斯电码），或通过二进制结构进行表达。此外，参与者还可以尝试使用现实红外协议（如 NEC 或 RC5），或设计完全自定义的编码规则。

在接收端，信息可以被转译为文本、数字、图像或声音等多种形式。例如，文本可以通过屏幕显示，数字可以通过数码管呈现，图像可以通过 LED 点阵逐步重建，而声音则可以通过蜂鸣器或扬声器表达。特别是在图像传输实验中，参与者可以将图像转化为像素数据并逐点发送，从而体验信息在不同媒介之间的转换过程。

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八、实验观察维度（Documentation）

在实验过程中，参与者将对通信过程进行观察与记录，包括信息的传输时间、误码情况以及信号丢失现象。尤其在多节点传递中，参与者将关注传播延迟（由人为操作与解码过程产生）以及信息在多次转译中的变化与衰减。此外，参与者也将记录自身的主观体验，例如理解过程中的困难、误读的产生以及沟通失败的情境，从而将技术实验转化为一种经验性的认知过程。

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九、最终输出（Outcomes）

工作坊的最终成果包括每组构建的通信系统原型、一套自定义编码规则以及一次完整的网络实验记录。这些成果可以以演示、装置或文档的形式呈现，使通信过程本身成为一种可被观看与体验的对象。

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十、项目价值（Why this matters）

本项目不仅是一次关于技术的实践，更是一种对通信基础设施的重新思考。在高度依赖互联网与中心化网络的当代社会中，它尝试将通信还原为最基本的物理过程，并探索在极端条件下的替代方案。同时，项目也通过编码系统的重构与网络结构的再设计，引导参与者反思技术背后的权力关系与控制机制。

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