As If There Were

Year: 2023–24
Research direction: Metaphor as Medium →
Role: Mural · Creative research
Team: Fan Xiang · Huiyan Huang
Partner: Adora Magic City cruise ship
Includes: Generative mural · Site-specific work · Paper

A Silk Road–themed generative mural created for the passage outside a theatre, using controlled randomness to translate the elusive atmosphere of ancient art into a contemporary spatial experience.

Generative muralSite-specific workPaper

Recreating ancient art in the present

Commissioned in 2023 for the theatre corridors of the Adora Magic City cruise ship, the mural began with a contradiction: a contemporary work could neither simply copy ancient images nor assume that digital tools alone would make them modern.

Finding a concept in the archive

Research into Silk Road and Dunhuang materials led to the uncertain apparition of the Buddha’s shadow and to the forms of the Deer King Jataka in Cave 257. The project did not reconstruct the cave; it took uncertainty, appearance, and disappearance as conceptual clues.

Randomness as metaphor

A random function produces values within defined limits. Here it became more than a generative effect: fixed rules and unpredictable results offered a visual metaphor for something that seems present but cannot be fully grasped—the meaning held in the title As If There Were.

A controlled generative process

Historical silhouettes define the fixed boundary, while code varies the color, position, size, and sequence of thousands of points. Repeated adjustment of these ranges balances recognizable figures with a field that can dissolve into particles when viewed closely.

A mural encountered in motion

One corridor uses a star-field version and the other a sand-colored version. Printed on acrylic panels along uneven passage walls, the work is never seen from one stable viewpoint. Walking produces a sequence of partial views similar to the shifting scenes of a garden corridor.

Between image and atmosphere

From a distance, travellers, animals, and Dunhuang-derived forms remain legible; at close range they become an abstract field. The work uses computation to hold ancient reference and contemporary experience together without claiming to reproduce the original sacred setting.

Star-field version of As If There Were — Star-field version: figures gather and dissolve across a blue generative field.

1 of 5

2mural versions: stars and sand

2023commission initiated

Random()generative principle

Designed for walking

The murals occupy the narrow passage outside a theatre on the Adora Magic City. They are encountered in motion, as a visual prelude or afterimage rather than a picture that asks viewers to stop.

An algorithmic metaphor

Figures derived from the Mogao Cave 257 Deer King mural become fields of points whose position, size, and transparency vary within controlled ranges. From different distances, forms gather and dissolve—‘as if there were’ something present.

Human judgment inside randomness

Each run generates a different field. The final work emerged through repeated parameter adjustment and selection, balancing algorithmic autonomy with the designer’s responsibility for the spatial experience.

Press

Tsinghua People Contributing Wisdom and Strength to China’s First Domestically Built Large Cruise Ship

28 February 2024 · Tsinghua University

Read the feature ↗