The work draws inspiration from the concept of Yu Gong, which embodies early Chinese geographical imagination and philosophical reflection, as one of China’s earliest geographical texts. Employing artificial intelligence to reinterpret and redraw the Chinese landscape, the work proposes a symbolic “new geographical origin” for contemporary civilization, establishing a renewed sensory connection between history and the present. Through AI’s reconstruction of topography, the work invites viewers to contemplate the formation of civilization from multiple perspectives and to reflect on human desire and projection between geography and imagination.

Starting from the Helan Mountains, the artist based the project on extensive authentic Chinese topographic data, using AI models such as StyleGAN, Pix2Pix, and MIDAS to train different components of the work and extract multidimensional information. At the same time, traces, textures, and brushstrokes from 10,000 traditional Chinese landscape paintings were used as a dataset, allowing the AI to learn the xieyi (expressive rather than representational) essence of ink painting. Through this process, the system generated synchronized outputs—three-dimensional AI topographic forms and two-dimensional digital imagery—integrating physical mountain sculptures with digital projections. Eight projectors cast AI-generated dynamic visuals onto a 21-meter-long sculptural surface, transforming the Arsenal's historical brick architecture into an immersive, poetic environment. Within this space, virtual images fill the voids of history, allowing light and movement to inhabit the material traces of the past.

This space—unknown yet sensorially tangible—is fundamentally virtual in origin. It emerges from the real world, yet does not belong to it; it exists beyond human experience while reaching toward a transcendental archetype of nature. In this work, the virtual is no longer an arrow shot into nothingness. By approaching and unsettling reality, it reveals the possibility of an invisible "real" —what might be called, in Daoist terms, knowing the tangible while preserving the void.

*Yu Gong, which embodies early Chinese geographical imagination and philosophical reflection. Recorded in the Book of Documents, Yu Gong is regarded as one of China’s earliest geographical texts. Structured around the division of the Nine Provinces, it maps the order of mountains, rivers, and territories while revealing the symbiotic relationship between nature and civilization, between the cosmic and the human realms.

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