PENG Hsing-Kai So, we’re off to Europe for the exhibition. How’s everyone feeling?

Andy Chen ¡Viva la buena comida!

LIU Yu-Ju I really want to go too.

Yaode JN Madrid is mysterious.

This conversation is meant to serve as an introduction to the exhibition, Hybrid Aesthetics: Signs, Not Sentences. Some of the works might be tricky for viewers to categorise—it’s that in-between space between art and design that we at TPaddassoc. have always championed. It’s about questioning boundaries and exploring the unknown. We still haven’t found a term that fully captures this ambiguity, so we’ll approach this dialogue through a series of back-and-forth questions, to share with the audience the phenomenological background of these works.

Interviewing and Writing——PENG Hsing-Kai

1.1
Visual Basis for Aesthetics

Andy Chen I’m drawn to creators who build their own worlds—who form new concepts, expressions, and a visual language that’s hard to put into words. I like work that shows a unique take on the world. Lately I’ve been into stuff that’s a bit bonkers—offbeat, kind of surreal. Like the posters Roosje Klap and Mathias Schweizer designed for the Dutch literary magazine De Gids—why is there a bed in that image? That sense of absurdity, when it clashes with familiar visual experience—creates a strong feeling of mystery and dissonance, like a glitch in time and space.

LIU Yu-Ju I also get that feeling when I see techniques or styles I’ve never encountered before. What moves me the most is that initial impact from something entirely new and undefined. It’s the unknown that draws me in. Work that’s hard to be defined or doesn’t follow trends—I tend to spend more time with that.

PENG Hsing-Kai ometimes I see works that are just visually pretty but don’t carry any symbolic weight, and I wouldn’t necessarily call those good. For me, symbolism is the core artistic instinct—a kind of emotional perception that’s exclusive, unnamable. It feels as though nothing else could be that. It carries this inexplicable presence—something that can only be experienced when you come face-to-face with it.

Yaode JN I look for suffering in the work. Has the artist truly poured themselves into their creation? That might be my criterion for what’s beautiful. If past pain and struggle have been distilled into something lasting, then those traces tend to reappear across the artist’s body of work. That transformation into aesthetic value—when I connect to it as a viewer, it feels meaningful.

PENG Hsing-Kai A few years ago we talked about how Flume’s music carries a kind of introspection—reflecting on the privilege of growing up in the dominant Western culture—enjoying the perks of it while being conscious of inequality. That internal conflict adds emotional depth, even though his career has been a lucky one.

Yaode JN Exactly. That self-reflection he leaves in his music—it’s rare to feel that in most works. And what you said about symbolism—yes, it’s a kind of trace. If all we're after is beautiful visuals or aesthetic pleasure, something always feels like it's missing.

PENG Hsing-Kai Creating symbols might be one of humanity’s original urges—to prove we exist. And viewing is tied to that, too. As a viewer, sometimes I experience this flash of insight, just from witnessing a work’s existence. That kind of reorientation through a symbolic network is something I really value.

Andy Chen That absurd feeling I mentioned—it's like, what’s it called again... Category III films? You know, that feeling of: “Whoa, how did this get made?” It’s a bit trashy but not too trashy—there’s a deliberate tackiness to it. And that ends up becoming its own kind of style.

PENG Hsing-Kai Not Category III films—you’re thinking of B movies. Category III is more like Crazy Love (蜜桃成熟時), that kind of adult film.

Andy Chen Oh right! B movies! Hahaaaaaaa I just couldn’t think of the name.

1.2
Applicability of Aesthetic Methods to AI-Generated Imagery

LIU Yu-Ju When Midjourney first launched, I honestly felt like the sense of mystery we look for in our own creative works could suddenly be generated so easily. That feeling has now become a kind of shorthand for AI-generated images, but it's lost its vitality. AI artworks still carry the mark of being AI—at least for now, you can clearly sense that the textures and materials are imitating human-made elements.

Andy Chen I feel like when it comes to abstract expression, AI hasn’t quite figured out how to create something truly nuanced or spiritually resonant. It often feels empty. What interests me more is how artists use AI—how they manipulate the tools to build symbolism. Is there any trace of historical context in the work? Has it been cleverly embedded into the piece? If it's merely a visual surface, then as Ruyu said, people will file it away as 'AI style' rather than recognizing an artist's unique voice.

Yaode JN I actually really enjoy AI-generated imagery. Before the tech went public, those images had no definite form or structure—they felt similar to the hazy moments of human consciousness. That strange, dreamlike quality—AI captured that really well. Later on, the illogical composites gave rise to a wave of “backrooms” and mysticism-inspired work. There’s a kind of boldness in those aesthetics that only really emerged in the world of generated images.

PENG Hsing-Kai There are two examples I think are worth bringing up. One is img.gn—a series of low-res, lo-fi images that feel like early memes or photos from the dark web, as if shot with an old phone. When the glitches and imperfections of AI are deliberately treated as a visual texture, those generated artefacts stop feeling obvious, and the illogical scenes suddenly feel eerily realistic.

Second is texture—Niceaunties has quite a mainstream aesthetic, often seen in those Instagram-friendly images of cute cats or capybaras. Her work’s even been featured in ELLE Decor Korea. She sticks to three consistent elements: elderly Asian people, cats, and jellyfish. That surreal combination overrides your awareness of texture—you’re just caught up in the weirdness of the arrangement.

Both cases create fully-formed worlds, consistent in quality and easy to mass-produce. They can evoke awe, the same way we once admired the craft of old-school creators. If the rawness of AI imagery can become a key element of expression, then AI’s current limitations no longer disqualify it from aesthetic consideration—just like we no longer dismiss digital art for showing signs of being “computer-made.”

So here’s the real question: if AI-generated images can build a cohesive worldview, can they also satisfy traditional aesthetic standards? Do our original principles of beauty even apply?

Yaode JN The experience of looking at AI images now is pretty much the same as looking at human-made ones. You’ll see something good and be drawn to it; you’ll see something bad and scroll past. But AI has opened up new perspectives—especially in how we reframe cultural frameworks. It can easily sidestep cultural references and historical baggage, making space for entirely new possibilities.

PENG Hsing-Kai I agree—there’s some AI art that I genuinely find beautiful. I think we’ll soon see a wave of backlash saying AI art “lacks craft,” because historically, aesthetic judgement has always included an appreciation of craftsmanship. That “no merit, but still effort” idea still influences how we evaluate images.

But when AI eliminates the need for craft, its biggest value might lie in how it helps us reconsider the relationship between humans and imagery. It could even push aesthetic judgement into a more purely sensory, visceral realm.

2.1
3D, 2D, and Traditional Fine Art

Andy Chen I haven’t been creating for very long. I started out drawing geometric shapes, tried using photography as a medium, and even experimented with clay at one point. I really love the unpredictability of physical materials—but that also makes it hard to precisely control symbols or work with subtle ideas. Digital tools, on the other hand, let me capture much finer perspectives.

The material I shoot feels like a series of fragments to me. Maybe it's because my shooting method highlights that sense of fragmentation. As a result, the outcome often feels a bit “patched together.” With 3D tools, though, it’s more like a tactile reassembly—like running your hand over a surface. As your way of touching changes, so does the object’s form. It’s never quite fixed.

LIU Yu-Ju My process is driven by sound and music—I use them to get into a particular state of mind. My mood at that moment affects how I create and even how my body moves. A brushstroke done on instinct, just a quick flick of the wrist, often best reflects how I’m feeling. With painting, I feel like I can express myself freely. Digital tools sometimes couldn’t reflect these moments directly.

Yaode JN That approach is very close to traditional fine art. Classical training tends to emphasise the relationship between medium and the body.

Andy Chen But in your work, we can sense both the texture of digital rendering and the touch of something hand-drawn. How do you strike that balance—whether it’s an intentional choice during the process, or how you expect viewers to read the finished piece?

PENG Hsing-Kai Yeah, I’ve wondered that too. I always assumed you were working digitally—until you once accidentally sent me a photo that hadn’t been cropped, and I realised the whole piece was actually painted with acrylics. I was honestly a bit stunned.

LIU Yu-Ju I’ve never deliberately tried to balance mediums. When I get the urge to make something, I just use whatever’s on hand. I’m studying in Melbourne right now, so for this exhibition, I had to improvise. I picked up plants outside, looked for salt in the kitchen, even rummaged through storage for usable materials. I don’t want my work to be easily identifiable by medium—I want its texture to remain ambiguous. That’s something I’m consciously managing.

PENG Hsing-Kai People can only create within the limits of their sensory perception. Maybe 3D tools are the best medium for fully realising a creator’s worldview—without directly interfering with the brain. Chris Cunningham’s 1999 music video for Björk’s All is Full of Love still doesn’t feel outdated today.

Andy Chen Using geometric lines used to make me feel boxed in—like I was stuck in a rigid structure. I was trying to find the “qi” in lines, but looking back, I’m not sure I fully subscribe to that traditional East Asian view anymore. So I started exploring “surfaces” instead. Working with 3D tools feels more like a process than a static outcome. Even back when I used geometric forms, I was more drawn to an unsettled coexistence of shapes, textures and elements, rather than tidy edges and clean surfaces.

That said, if I find myself really averse to certain elements, it usually means there’s something unresolved about them for me. So although I often switch up my methods, some elements get thrown out, while others come back in new ways. It’s like unlocking a new map in a game—new materials shift my entire thought process, even if the essence of my work stays the same.

In that sense, I think “lines” are still something I want to hold onto—not just as visual elements, but for their sharpness, clarity, and emotional weight. At the same time, I want to preserve softness too—fine structures visible at the micro level, or a certain inner, almost spiritual, state of being.

2.2
Distilling Symbols

PENG Hsing-Kai Yaode, your commissioned design work leans towards low-saturation tones and spatial oddness, whereas your personal projects favour realistic lighting, texture, and strict perspective. Why do you intentionally separate the two?

Yaode JN When working on commissions, my goal is to build brand identities for clients. Like the pink for Manbo Key (楊登棋), or the black square for WANG Hsiang-Lin (王湘靈)—those colours, shapes, signals are meant to become long-term symbols that the artists can use to communicate with the outside world.

That said, some projects only allow subtraction, or I can only offer conceptual direction. I can’t always steer the result. Some projects fail outright, and the successful ones often depend on the artist’s personality, their content, my mental state at the time, or practical constraints. Artists themselves are symbol-makers. So the “design” side has a clear framework, and I use it as a way to help audiences enter the artist’s world.

PENG Hsing-Kai That’s a very contemporary approach to symbol-making. Contemporary branding is different from modernist branding—it's not about designing a logo and telling people to adhere to some abstract value system. Like the green Daniel Lee picked for Bottega Veneta, or the knight blue he used for Burberry—it’s impressive and a bit baffling, like these colours always belonged to the brand, but no one had noticed before. That kind of process helps clients recognise their core identity. I think it’s one of the more effective ways to build a brand today.

It’s like Barthes' punctum and aura in photography—William Eggleston focuses on things with unspeakable metaphoric angles. Or like the “backrooms” you mentioned earlier—when something ordinary triggers a feeling that’s eerie, unsettling, surreal. Or take Miller’s by Hubertus Design for example—the Miller’s, Image campaign 18/19 trains the viewer to sense the strange within the everyday. Your design seems to distil all those unspeakable, chaotic parts into something concrete, so the viewer can tune into a consistent state that brings them closer to the artist’s performance.

Yaode JN That’s definitely a more concept-driven design approach. As a contrast, when I do visuals for Pawnshop or Homo Pleasure, those clients tend to adopt my—or other designers’—personal creative methods. Projects like those give me far more freedom, so I can approach them with a creative mindset, rather than thinking in terms of “design should serve a purpose.” We don’t have to plan their function or overly control whether they meet a specific need. Instead, we just let the visuals evolve naturally—just enough to do their job.

PENG Hsing-Kai Designing for Pawnshop feels a bit like “authorial participation”—like you’re hinting that “the designer will be there dancing too.” The purpose of party visuals is straightforward: to let people intuitively sense that something exciting is about to happen. That simplicity makes the execution much more open and adaptable, allowing it to accommodate a range of creators’ styles.

Yaode JN Even though the visual styles for Pawnshop aren’t completely unified, their identity remains strong. When a designer joins the project, it’s already a form of selection—the consistency actually comes from the client’s taste and filtering. As long as we stay within the basic framework of “visuals made on top of joy,” then the creator’s personal voice and approach become welcome, organic elements.

2.3
Defocusing

Yaode JN Visual design usually highlights or defines a focal subject. But in your work, the foreground and background often blur into each other—or even violently strip the material of its original meaning. I know you’ve got a narrative method called “defocusing,” but beyond the theoretical layer, I’m curious: emotionally, what draws you to this kind of treatment?

PENG Hsing-Kai Focal techniques have been thoroughly explored in art history. There’s hardly anything left in that realm that still excites me. If a piece doesn’t feel like it contributes something to history, I genuinely feel nothing. So I’ve resorted to elimination—trying to find a path forward by removing things from the visual experience. I know this is how I separate commercial work from cultural missions. But I refuse to let my talents be reduced to momentary commercial highs.

I think life, at its core, is melancholic. The world’s full of things we can’t control. Deep down, I fear that all of it—everything we do—might end up being meaningless. I want my work to help people realise that. You could call it nihilism, sure. Because in my own life, every single thing I once believed was important... eventually turned out not to be. I expect my clients to share that mindset. So I deliberately destroy what they think is important, forcing them to experience a kind of self-collapse.

Yaode JN That sounds absolutely unhinged.

PENG Hsing-Kai I won’t deny it. But the strange thing is—the final result always ends up feeling more meaningful than anyone expected. But where does that feeling come from? No one knows. It’s just my style. Maybe it’s only through destruction that we can actually reach something new—see what truly matters. You have to self-destruct before you can be reborn.

That series of Sunrise Department Store (中興百貨) ads from the ’90s had a big influence on me—“Only through self-destruction can one attain eternal life.” (自毀才得永生) I think that phrase may well be the foundation of my entire methodology.

3.1
YaodeJN: A Cognitive Approach to Image-Making

PENG Hsing-Kai From your work over the years—starting in 2015 and through all your client projects—there’s this consistent quality. It triggers something sharp, vacant, and fleeting in the senses. It feels almost biological, rather than psychological or cultural. Given your background in number theory and physics, would you say this is a kind of cognitive science in practice?

Yaode JN It’s definitely a sensation unique to images. The initial jolt that images provoke in people—it’s not based on cultural references or symbolism. For me, cultural symbols don’t hold much value. What I’m after is using visual language to make people confront the strangeness inside themselves. It’s like music—sometimes it just takes one element, or a very slight shift in arrangement, to deliver something raw, shocking, or weirdly natural.

PENG Hsing-Kai I see cultural symbols as a kind of collective understanding that’s already been numbed. Images once considered vulgar or taboo were once confined to the shadows of society, but now they’re everywhere—on Instagram, in the news, on OnlyFans. What used to be shocking in private is now completely normalised.

Yaode JN Exactly. That’s the trap of culture. The meaning of a symbol is something constructed, and over time, after enough exposure, reinterpretation, and refinement, it just gets absorbed into the norm. What’s left is just a plain reference, and the space for actual sensation disappears. Sure, we can still use cultural symbols as a kind of guide for the audience—to enhance a certain feeling—but to me, what really matters in image-making is staying aware of the initial impact.

PENG Hsing-Kai Every creator has a different kind of sensitivity to those first impressions. Designers after the war often tapped into something swelling, resonant—like a constant low-frequency hum. Yours feels more like the sensation of a fine, soft needle puncturing cleanly and instantly. It leaves a sharp mark on the viewer’s perceptual network—but you can’t get that same feeling by studying the image or looking at it over and over again. It’s hard to even describe in words. Whether or not the creator is aware of this—that’s what decides how far their artistic life can go.

Yaode JN Those indescribable sensations are exactly what creators should keep chasing. If you stop exploring, the work ends up just packaging content. It’s no longer about the image itself. When a creator stumbles upon a visual phenomenon and feels something strange—how do they capture that? What allowed them to do it in the first place? Was it pure instinct? Or life experience giving them the ability to handle sensation?

If you follow their work over time, you’ll see whether they’ve actually become aware of the kinds of intensity they’re producing. No one expects an artist to remain at their peak forever. Just having touched it once is already precious. But once someone reaches that stage, we need to be able to recognise it.

PENG Hsing-Kai There are designers who remain consistent their whole lives—fully aware of the symbolic value in their work. Their visual language can evolve over decades. Kim Do-Hyung is real, objective proof of this topic. But more often, we’ve seen people who once touched something essential in image-making, and then just... lost it. Maybe they never realised what they had. Or maybe their environment never gave them the space to realise it.

3.2
LIU Yu-Ju: Envelopment

Yaode JN Your earlier work had those fluorescent plant-like colours and intricate painterly textures, but it’s shifted—now it feels almost Gothic and overwhelming, like Cologne Cathedral. The scale’s changed too, from photographic fragments to vast spatial canvases. What does this shift mean for your practice?

LIU Yu-Ju Painting’s always been a deep influence for me—especially styles that really emphasise flatness. I find it fascinating to explore how a flat surface can still suggest depth or spatial feeling. I recently saw Julie Mehretu: A Trace of the Radical Imagination at MCA. Her work isn’t just painting—she starts by photographing architecture in cities, turns that into a blurry base layer, then adds in outlines of space, collage, and spray paint, building up layers. She uses that structure to talk about politics and geography, and that sense of spatial construction really stuck with me.

I hadn’t really thought of my own work as creating an “enveloping” feeling, but maybe it does. I’ve always wanted to build a world within a flat plane—something immersive, a space the viewer can sink into and explore.

Yaode JN Like that projection piece you showed at NTNU—it felt like you were holding a camera in an endless space, and where you pointed it didn’t even matter.

PENG Hsing-Kai That’s a really unique perspective in your work. When we talk about constructed worlds, take Jonathan Zawada for example—his aesthetic feels like he’s documenting flora and fauna on some alien planet. If one plant looks a certain way, you’d expect the others in that world to follow suit. But your work doesn’t describe the things in the world, it feels like it’s describing the space itself. Like in FKA Twigs’ LP1 with the greenish cyan one. But instead of just using a flat colour to suggest infinity, you actually draw out that envelopment—the sensation of being wrapped in space.

LIU Yu-Ju I saw Taishi Urakawa’s work last year—2023—and before that I’d assumed it was all digital. But when I saw it in person, I realised it was hand-painted with actual pigments. That contrast really surprised me. It had this blurry quality, a strange way of shaping space that I found so intriguing. I still don’t have a clear direction yet. I’m still figuring things out. Lately I’ve been thinking about shifting to new media—maybe that’ll open up new possibilities.

3.3
PENG Hsing-Kai: Commonality and Empathy

Andy Chen There’s always this sense of connection in your work—a feeling of openness and equality. Where does that come from? And after 2020, your work started to feel almost noble, like fine art. What brought about that shift? How do you balance values like equality and nobility in your images?

PENG Hsing-Kai I think it comes from my taste in music. I’m really drawn to sounds that are bright, transparent, full of air—though not necessarily clean. Tracks like Laura Mvula’s Green Garden or Faye Wong’s The New Roommate (王菲, 新房客)—the images they create in my mind, I find them deeply moving. It’s like there’s this invisible membrane between us, a subtle distance. I would filter out that specific emotional texture, that soft spatial resonance.

I’ve always had this obsession with the feeling of reverence—I don’t think I’m important, but I love the sensation of revering something. Pre-industrial European art had this sense of grace, intricacy, a spirit of awe. That’s always fascinated me. After I started studying image history and classical painting, I tried to consciously fold that feeling into my work. Before that, I’d experimented with public domain images from pre-WWI, and works from the realism to Impressionism period in the 18th century. But it all felt not quite devout enough.

Yaode JN So do you want people to worship you? Or do you want to make something that’s worthy of worship?

PENG Hsing-Kai Not at all. I don’t think of my work as some kind of self-deifying pursuit. I’m trying to introduce the presence of something—something out there worth admiring or fearing. The work just acts as a kind of interface, and I’m simply one of the people who happened to notice it. Maybe that’s why my work naturally comes across as egalitarian, flattening the hierarchy between the viewer and the artist. Being in a state of awe makes me genuinely happy, but maybe I’ve gotten older—I haven’t found anything to revere in a while. There’s been this nagging emptiness in me the last few years.

Andy Chen Back when we worked on the Commonality and Empathy party visuals, you mentioned that sometimes, while creating, it feels like the work isn’t even yours. Have you figured out why you get into that state?

PENG Hsing-Kai Hmm... after I published my book in 2018, I spent three years trying to live up to the standard I’d set in writing. Back then, the ideas were more refined than my actual work. I also realised my output lacks craft value... my skills don’t hold much weight historically. What I’m good at is selecting, combining, reorganising resources into something coherent with maximum efficiency.

I get excited by distilled concepts in academic writing. When scholars summarise their entire field in a clean, powerful paragraph—that thrill is similar to what I feel when I encounter truly transcendent art. I collect shared, elevated experiences across disciplines and translate them into visual form. To be honest, there’s not much technical difficulty in my design. What matters is that the final result expresses the collective resonance of everyone involved in the project—and my own intention.

3.4
Andy Chen: The Terrarium

PENG Hsing-Kai Whether it’s your geometric pieces or your 3D work, there’s always this strange sense of “organic inorganics” in your images. It’s as if everything—shapes, materials—feels “plant-like.” You can’t see it on a macro level, but on a microscopic scale, you get the sense that every cell is pulsing with life. Are you aware of this when you’re creating?

Andy Chen It’s only recently that I’ve started to look at it more seriously. I do have this habit of getting obsessed with small details—I kind of fall into them—and that seems to show up in my work. I’ve always thought of my pieces as little boxes, like petri dishes or observation chambers for microorganisms. They hold colour, texture, and whatever state those things are in, all sealed inside.

In the future, I’d like to invite viewers into these boxes. Let them influence how the “organisms” inside grow, just by looking. Thinking back, maybe the reason I gradually moved away from geometric structures is that I was trying to show this growing process—trying out different materials to mimic that evolution, to illustrate the different stages of being observed.

Yaode JN Looking at your work always gives me that feeling of watching an ant nest or a beehive—some kind of insect colony, always shifting, always swarming. Do you think this mental image reflects how you perceive reality?

Andy Chen Yeah, that’s actually a great description. The work starts off as a kind of patchwork collection—gathering objects I’ve sensed or felt something from, putting them all in one place. But when my perception of those objects changes—even something as flat as a leaf, when viewed under a microscope, shows a whole world of texture—I start to introduce elements of chance, to “liberate” their forms.

The original collection falls apart, and something else takes over—something grotesque, pathological, disturbing. A kind of expanding organic tissue, pushing past logical expectations. The shapes start to gain movement, evolve, mutate into something... indefinite.

Thinking about it, my two-dimensional work doesn’t quite feel like “boxes” in the same way. I suppose what I’m trying to explore is what happens when I put an idea into one of these three-dimensional petri dishes—what it grows into, what it becomes.

PENG Hsing-Kai A few years back, Yu-Ju, you mentioned how the vibrant colours in your work were influenced by traditional Taiwanese temple culture, and that you were inspired by music and sound to structure your visuals. Has your thinking changed since then?

LIU Yu-Ju Now I think the bold colours of temples are just part of my upbringing. They shaped some of my instinctive reactions in design, but they don't define my visual language. I’ve also realised that music and sound are just effective mediums that trigger my visual responses. When I hear sounds, they produce images in my mind, and this connection between sound and image has become part of my creative process. It’s more of a method than a theme.

That said, I still think about my work through the lens of Taiwan’s cultural history. Even if my style doesn’t quite fit in here, it’s actually the result of transforming Taiwan’s colour vocabulary into my work. I want to re-present these visual elements from a different perspective. Taiwan is a place of constant cultural exchange, and that diversity gives me the freedom to explore new possibilities.

If I were to describe it visually, my work feels like the branches and leaves growing from a tree. It might not be the trunk, but it’s still part of the whole tree, coexisting with everything else.

PENG Hsing-Kai That’s a really interesting point. We often say that artists “reference a culture,” but more often it’s actually about the sensory triggers in someone’s formative years. It can’t simply be viewed as appropriation—it’s inseparable from their lived experience. Like in North Sydney Park, there's an “orchestra” section where kids can pick any instrument and just bang away freely. Or when we first visited Seoul, we were surprised to see that playgrounds for toddlers were entirely black. A culture’s aesthetic style often just grows naturally out of everyday life.

Yaode JN Exactly. And although Yu-Ju’s use of colour looks rich, she rarely uses complex tones. In Taiwan, what we’re exposed to is often pure, saturated colours. Even on a professional level, visual design here still heavily relies on strong, primary hues. There’s very little use of subtle, transitional, or ambiguous tones.

LIU Yu-Ju I just listened to a podcast yesterday where the host mentioned taking her child to a Japanese children’s bookstore and noticing how most of the books used low-saturation colours—she found that fascinating. My family used to run a corner shop, and as a kid I grew up surrounded by all sorts of colourful packaging, with odd graphics and type everywhere. Maybe that visual environment influenced my aesthetic without me even realising it—but it wasn’t something I deliberately chose.

Yaode JN Andy, your work often features melting and distortion, creating these body horror-like images that aren't quite human, with rocky textures but biological characteristics. What first drew you to making those kinds of visuals?

Andy Chen I never set out to make them feel horrific. It probably came from the sticky, doughy feel of clay. For me, image-making is more like a playful process, kind of like observing microorganisms.

I used to go out shooting with Lou—he loved photographing complex structures. I found myself more drawn to textures, especially the ones we don’t usually notice. I’d deliberately make those details the focus, highlight them in different ways, and build a new world around them. That gives me a sense of ease—like the overlooked parts of everyday life can become their own visual language. I’ve only recently realised that maybe I’m just a bit odd.

PENG Hsing-Kai LIU Yu-Ju Yaode JN Recently!?

Andy Chen Recently… yeah, I’ve been spiralling into weird thought holes more easily.

PENG Hsing-Kai Yaode, you used to incorporate faces and flesh a lot, but more recently you’ve been referencing mythology and classical sculpture. What does that shift mean to you?

Yaode JN I haven’t really thought about it much. Do I like living things? Or do I like the sense of order in organic forms—order? Is there order in the human body? Maybe. Maybe not. I’m not sure if there’s an actual connection between flesh and order, but it does seem to relate to some mathematical or physical concepts. Fractal “self-replicating” structures might explain, to some extent, my confusion about how life becomes life.

Ancient symbols in classical art are incredibly nuanced. In Michelangelo’s Pietà, for instance, Mary Magdalene’s hand never actually touches Christ. Artists across different periods have collectively constructed this subtle sense of spatial tension—not merely as a matter of technique, but as a reflection of their era’s mindset. These expressions reveal a disassembly of meaning and an atmospheric strangeness born from the gaps between signs. I find that fascinating.

At times, the meaning embedded in the original work resonates with the concepts I want to express, or aligns with the client’s brief—such as in Queer Mafia (流鶯氓匪) and Ezra (以斯拉). That’s why I choose to incorporate it. I’m not opposed to using local references either, but the lack of open access to historical archives in Taiwan does place limits on creative possibilities.

PENG Hsing-Kai Sampling originally came from music, but we’ve translated it into a way of reclaiming the value of imagery. For instance, Hingston Studio’s Cocoa Sugar reinterpreted Waldemar Świerzy’s Nocny Kowboj, and the image’s life carries on. Art reflects the collective obsessions of its time. Visual archives carry a kind of temporal spiral—some symbols can transcend eras, others are locked in a specific time. These cross-temporal exchanges help form a kind of group will among creators, and maybe that’s the most beautiful thing about being human.

5.1
Divinity

Yaode JN I often feel there’s a duality in aesthetic experience. When the artist’s pain and struggle overlaps with my own lived experiences, the act of viewing becomes a kind of response to the work—almost a dialogue with the creator. Perception isn’t just about passively receiving emotion; it also generates a personal interpretation. In that sense, the creator’s struggle can carry a religious kind of divinity. You see this inFlanch》’s self-titled album, or FKA Twigs’ Magdalene—both hold that pain and devotion Hsing-Kai mentioned earlier.

PENG Hsing-Kai I get the sense that in these works, the artist’s will and desire are almost dissociated, like in SBTRKT’s Wonder Where We Land, where a second self submits to something higher—and by Save Yourself, even his own symbols are “subtracted”, leading to a state of egolessness. But whether that’s the same as religious divinity... I’m not sure.

LIU Yu-Ju Isn’t the sense of mystery itself also a kind of divinity? It feels like something from beyond this world. And doesn’t that “unknown” feel similar to the “egolessness” you were talking about? I’m drawn to the unknown—I’m a bit superstitious when it comes to mysticism. Could this fascination with mystery be a form of the divine?

PENG Hsing-Kai What you’re describing sounds closer to what Immanuel Kant called the “sublime”—that overwhelming, almost terrifying feeling when the spirit confronts the infinite and forgets the self. But the kind of egolessness tied to devotion feels more intentional, like Buddha embracing suffering to reach transcendence. Kant’s version is a passive aesthetic experience—I can’t think of a way his theory could explain egolessness as active surrender.

Yaode JN I think Flanch really captures the ritualistic spirit of religion—fasting, bleeding altars, followers deliberately enduring pain to reach a shared spiritual state. Even as a bystander, it’s terrifying and overwhelming, because you’re witnessing people destroy themselves for a belief.

PENG Hsing-Kai Sorry, this just made me picture something unintentionally funny. If you look at it from a sensory theory perspective, a cathedral is designed to make people feel awe. But these days, all I can picture are tourists taking selfies in front of a pipe organ. These sensory cues used to condition behaviour, but their power is fading as time goes on. In a way, it shows we're no longer as easily moved by visual stimuli.

Yaode JN Exactly. People’s thresholds are higher now. Even without formal training, if someone walks slowly through a church in a cloak holding a candle, you’d still feel the solemnity—or the creepiness. But today, our perception doesn’t always catch those signals. We’re so used to filtering everything through memes that the “sacred” loses its impact. Still, I think that primal sense of awe will return in new forms, as we continue to explore the unknown and the supernatural.

PENG Hsing-Kai In the past, people idolised figures and treated them almost like religious icons. That kind of mass devotion feels rare now. Individual thought has replaced group values as the centre of judgement. And with the rise of individualism, the concept of “God” has splintered—more people are atheists or materialists.

So, do you think “divinity” is still a meaningful concept for artists to explore? Or has the disappearance of divinity become irreversible?

Yaode JN Why wouldn’t it matter? Isn’t humanity’s urge to explore the unknown an essential part of who we are?

LIU Yu-Ju I think being able to perceive something greater or more profound is what makes creating so compelling. That awareness of the divine is what drives us to keep going.

Andy Chen I read this book recently—The Bonobo and the Atheist. The author looks at the link between religion and animal behaviour. Frans de Waal discusses how some parts of Scandinavia attempted to remove religion entirely, to see how it would affect society. Turns out, not much changed—whether it was ecology, public safety, or social behaviour. And interestingly, even animals show signs of “sacred behaviour”.

So maybe the pursuit of the divine isn’t rooted in religion, but in something more instinctual. He suggests that our moral sense—our sense of right and wrong—might come from the survival norms of social animals. Religion rituals may have amplified these instincts, but at the core, maybe they’re just hardwired into our genes.

5.2
The Ideal Form

Andy Chen So... what do you think is the meaning of creating? Like taking a shit—you go when you need to go.

LIU Yu-Ju Like taking a shit—you go when you need to go.

Yaode JN Do you get constipated?

LIU Yu-Ju If so, I just do something else.

Andy Chen I see creation as a way of experiencing and understanding the world. Though it’s true—some artists really have compared it to taking a shit.

LIU Yu-Ju Aren’t any of you worried your work will be replaced by AI?

Yaode JN If it happens, it happens. Might actually be a good thing. It forces creators to rethink meaning—and for the public, it’s just a shift in style.

PENG Hsing-Kai If AI evolves to make choices and develop its own sense of beauty, it’ll be humanity’s greatest creation—we’ll have built something more brilliant than ourselves.

LIU Yu-Ju Right, maybe I should switch to new media.

PENG Hsing-Kai You’ll be replaced even faster in new media.

LIU Yu-Ju What about fine art? I don’t know... I’m lost.

Yaode JN Not again.

PENG Hsing-Kai I work with a photographer who’s super forgetful. He says all his memories live with his friends. That made me think of the Information Island—some knowledge only exists within specific media or is processed by certain communities. We're still the ones who hold knowledge and memory. AI just becomes one of the "islands" storing some of it. But if creators obsess over whether their work will be mimicked by AI, they’ll have to accept this: they might never be remembered by history at all.

Andy Chen People are too pessimistic about AI. I think it’s taste and selection that determine whether a piece gets replaced—not the tools.

PENG Hsing-Kai The “ideal form” is from Plato. He said what we see is just a shadow of reality. He used the cave metaphor—humans sitting in a circle, backs to a fire, only able to see the shadows on the cave wall. They mistake the shadows for reality, never knowing what’s outside. The real “form” exists beyond that.

So, what’s your ideal form? How do you approach it—and express it through your work?

Andy Chen I’m not sure I fully understand it, but I think mine might be “play”. Not games, but the instinct to play—something humans have always done. I’m trying to channel that instinct into my work.

LIU Yu-Ju I’m still not entirely sure either. But one thing I do know—if I stop looking for it, I probably won’t keep making work. For me, creating is about the search itself.

PENG Hsing-Kai My ideal form might be an unplaceable fear. Like in The Three-Body Problem, there’s this line: “We will destroy your science.” That hit me. It made me realise how deeply we fear stagnation. Our belief in endless progress is an illusion that blinds us to the need for fear.

The only honest line I’ve ever heard about art and design is: “Creation is for the self.” If something’s never existed, that’s exactly why it should be made. At the same time, I believe everyone’s a unique being—so exploring the self has value in the larger story of humanity. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t feel alive. Even if, in the end, it’s no different from being a troll online just to prove you exist.

Yaode JN My ideal form... honestly, I don’t know. Maybe it’s a kind of “void processor”, which has only made my sense of meaninglessness grow. A lot of things just don’t feel important anymore. The things you care about—others probably don’t. So does that mean I care what other people think? Or should I just focus on what matters to me?

Lately, I’ve realised there’s no need to convince anyone to care about the same things I do. But the moment I accept that, I start to feel helpless. If everything’s just down to personal choice—then what’s still worth doing?

LIU Yu-Ju We’re all lost, together.

Yaode JN Fine by me.