Rooted in Jiayu’s collection of Mickey Mouse LEGO sets — particularly the monochrome Steamboat Willie, Disney’s seminal synchronized sound animation — Riding Waves, Chasing Dreams reimagines a classic cultural icon as a vessel for projection, transformation, and speculative navigation. Mickey becomes not merely a nostalgic figure, but an avatar navigating a digitized dreamscape shaped by wind, wave, and code.

Realized as an immersive projection installation, the work uses HOUDINI to generate fluid particle simulations, merging with real-time air traffic data, wind vectors, and oceanic environmental inputs across the central Pacific. The resulting visual field is a computational Pacific Ocean of intention and atmosphere, where calculated turbulence meets mediated fantasy.

People entering the space are invited to search for Mickey; this act of "looking" becomes a metaphorical behavior: a telescopic longing, a navigation toward the dreamlike things. The telescope here functions not as a tool for clarity, but as an instrument for poetic uncertainty, aligning perception with projection. By entangling early animation history, planetary weather systems, and personal collections as a memory archive, it invites people to trace: to trace the trajectories of media, imagination, and the flickering signals that travel between nostalgia and invention.

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