2022 Show Reel Yutao Fang

      Even Though I Would Drown

This short film is trying to describe the one and only ocean in the eye of drones, AI, and me. 

It's interesting that three of the cities I spent the longest time living in have excess to the ocean. The view of the ocean from the coastline is almost the same, and the salty smell somehow brings me the cozy feeling of home. I wish I could evoke people's love of the ocean by providing some non-human perspective.

This project is my first attempt at composing AI-generated images into the real-life footage in Nuke. It was a novel experience to work with some assets that I couldn't manipulate. These assets are like "noise" interfering with the images I produced, bringing up some uncertainty about the outcome.

       Ninyo's Dream

My project is about landscapes where embedded objects from Japanese culture freely transform between scales. Those enigmatic scales of literal symbolic objects make them possible to transform between abstract contexts.

Fractals are born from truth embodied rows of mathematic equations. It is a timeless, almost Immortalized beauty. I am using fractals to blur the boundary set up by time. Trying to connect the physical world with cultural history.

I tried to work in the way of disorientation. The landscape is not only about the orientation of plants or terrain. They are landscapes in between us, flowing inside our body and imagination.

Experience Experiment Expectation

My thesis aims to create an Asian-futurism to merge the tradition and mystics of the Miao people with technology, based on a parafunctional concept that metals have biological qualities. 

The story happens in a village of Miao people - a group of ethnic minorities living in the Southern-west of China, my hometown. Their origins can be traced back to the Yan and Huang Era, around 5000 years ago. My study mainly focused on their silver ornaments. 

The Miao people were born to be faithful believers of animism. According to their oral epic, all Miao people are descendants of a butterfly and water bubbles. The essence of animism is ancient people’s awe of nature due to ignorance.

A nonlinear narrative was used in the storytelling to break the temporality of traditional practices. The two characters in the film are the same person from different spots on the timeline. The whole story is a Mobius strip. 

When inanimate objects in the traditional definition are given biological qualities as a hybrid lifeform, the boundary between species, organic and inorganic, was blurred. Through these "Chimera" eyes, I look for a more intimate symbiotic relationship between man and nature, tradition and technology.

As a project born before the introduction of any Covid vaccine during the epidemic, it is my rebellion against the excess of human influence.

Breath

My project, Breath, began with a simple question: How do humans breathe in extreme environments without the help of a machine?

 At a turning point where humanity is rediscovering its insignificance in the post-epidemic era, I think it’s time to rethink our relationship with nature. In this project, I put forward a hypothesis to establish a symbiotic relationship with nature by using gene recoding technology.

The mask is the product of genetic engineering that integrates DNA from humans and fungi. These sticky, jelly-like organisms are symbiotic bacteria that have been genetically reprogrammed to grow out of the face when air conditions are harsh, as a respiration-enhancing device. 

The story begins with a breath sound muffled by a mask. Our heroine sets out from the darkness of the unknown. On her journey, she discovered the vast dome, half-buried in the gravel. It has the same shape and composition as its armor. 

She jumps down and lands in an abandoned underground laboratory. A large amount of research material related to her stored in the laboratory made her realize that this was her birthplace. The air and temperature of the laboratory were familiar and reassuring to her. She stripped herself of her exo-cartilage and walked out naked, trying to find other companions. 

The story ends with a long shot of a baby, wrapped in symbiotic bacteria, sleeping in an eggshell that will soon become her or his exo-cartilage. As the eggshell slowly opens, the exposed symbiotic bacteria return to her or him. The camera freezes, and the baby is born - a new cycle of life begins.

This is my first attempt at creating short films with Cinema 4D and Houdini. The moment I finished this project, I found myself belonging to the world of visual storytelling.

Thank You !

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