Bixiao Zhang Biography
Bixiao Zhang (Frankie) is a digital artist and Ph.D. candidate at RMIT University. Her practice-led research, a fluid entity termed “The ElectroPoetics”explores performative engagements with the digital environment and ecological approach to human-robot interaction, guided by Chinese Shan-shui thought, feminist eco-poetics, and electrodynamics. 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. 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, Footscray Community Arts, and Blindside Gallery (Australia).
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.