The Riverside is a poetic site-specific installation deeply rooted in the artist’s personal cultural identity and emotional experience. Through real-time data-generated imagery, the work juxtaposes two geographically distant rivers: the Rivers in China and the River in the UK, within the same visual and temporal framework. It reflects on how technology reshapes time and historical experience, while exploring the "cultural wormholes" opened by new media, historical surfaces that are re-read, reorganized, and re-imaged through technological mediation.

Geological layers serve as natural archives of time, preserving traces of human activity, climate change, and the movement of civilizations. The central symbol of the installation originates from a 3D scan of a riverbed that passes through the Great Wall of China. The collected data were precisely transformed into sculptural form and fabricated using CNC milling to recreate the physical contours of the original terrain. Based on the scanned data, the artist employed Houdini to produce highly realistic fluid simulations, constructing dynamic water flows through particle systems and 3D modeling. The visual processing system, developed with the RULR toolkit, synchronizes projection and sculpture with great precision. At the same time, real-time rendering and control are guided by the actual positions of the sun and moon above Beijing.

Through this reorganization of time, data, light, and geography are realigned within a single system, allowing the fluidity of nature to merge with the generative logic of the digital. Six projectors cast these flowing images onto the sculptural surface, reawakening the river within the space as a living medium of time.

As viewers walk through the installation, the direction of the projected The Great Wall river runs parallel to the Thames outside the exhibition venue, both flowing from west to east. Between these two rivers, people are invited to reflect on the continuous dialogue between geology and civilization, listening to the invisible echoes that drift between nature and memory.

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