Talk: Chinese Social Evening at EVA

Yi Ji and Sean Clark discuss teaching creative technology at Guangdong University of Technology, followed by Helena Wee’s performative lecture on landscapes. Yi Ji presents student projects and considers how AI can support visual development and interactive coding without replacing cultural understanding. Recording the working process helps teachers assess learning and distinguish exploration from shortcuts. Clark demonstrates physical computing projects built with micro:bit controllers, sensors, lights and motors. Students combine skills to develop interactive objects informed by Chinese visual traditions, including responsive lighting, patterned lanterns and porcelain inspired forms. Problems become opportunities to investigate components, revise mechanisms and test alternatives. Clark emphasises programming as creative literacy rather than vocational training, and encourages AI where it improves experimentation instead of bypassing iterative design. Documentation makes these decisions visible. Wee’s Speculative Elemental Landscapes then frames climate questions through qi, the five elements and mountain water painting. Moving through seasonal iterations, the lecture considers multiple perspectives, relations between visible and invisible, and the possibility of caring ecological futures. Its modelling language exposes tensions between prediction, feeling and totalising systems, ending with an overfitted model whose accuracy leaves no space for error. Together, the contributions connect technical practice with culture, process and environmental responsibility.

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