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Bixiao Zhang Biography
Bixiao Zhang is a digital artist and Ph.D. candidate at RMIT University living in Naarm(Melbourne). Her practice-led research, a fluid entity termed “The ElectroPoetics,” proposes a performative approach to digital media and algorithmic architecture driven by the intersections of Chinese Shanshui(mountain-water) Thought, feminist eco-poetics, and electro-dynamism. Her performative “Shan-Shui" practice situates dynamic digital substrates for transversal modes of engagement and co-current mattering, an approach that accentuates tacit resonance as primordial modes of care. Bixiao mainly engaged in public art projects and residencies in the Asia Pacific before 2020, such as residency at Hong Kong Cattle Depot Art Village (2017), Goethe Institute x Creative Fes Shenzhen (2019), and JMMK #12 media festival Indonesia (2020), Hua Niao Island International Art Festival, China (2021). These projects are interested in the influence of the digital environment’s emergent ontogenetic patterns on a specific physical site. Bixiao won the 2021 Dean’s Award for her research project. Her latest projects include an artist residency at the Centre for Projection Art (Australia), a research residency at Post Humanist Art Network (San Francisco), and exhibitions at Bunjil Place, the Chinese Museum, and Federation Square (Melbourne).
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The ElectroPoetics explores a performative approach to the digital environment as a praxis of care, situating dynamic relations amongst electronic entities such as artificial intelligence, online media, electronic hardware, and users. Such being-hoods are guided by the elusive Chinese Shan-Shui thought, Emily Dickinson's eco-poetics, and quantum electrodynamics. The ElectroPoetics emphasize ontogenetic processes, affective gestures, and co-current lived experiences in their digital artworks. The ElectroPoetics’ "Shan-Shui" performativity in the digital world is a transformative ethical-aesthetic activity exploring autopoiesis in the electronic world.