Apr 7th 2017

Yingting Cui and Siman Meng: On the Edge of Virtual Infosphere

@ gallery no one

1579 N Milwaukee Ave Rm 303, Chicago, IL

Opening Friday, April 7th, from 6 PM - 9 PM

On view through Friday, April 14th

gallery no one is pleased to present a two-person show “On the Edge of Virtual Infosphere” by Yingting Cui and Siman Meng.

Since the Golden Shield Project launched in the late 90s, residents of Mainland China have been living in an enclosed “copycat” Internet sphere. The system is so well constructed as an internal network that it provides anything a user asks from the Internet but the access to the Internet itself. In exhibition “On the Edge of Virtual Info-sphere”, Yingting Cui and Siman Meng explore what it means to live inside China-net, and to migrate to the Internet. In the process of shifting identity, an awareness of the info-sphere is evoked.

Artists in this exhibition present personal relationship with the China-net through two dynamic approaches. Yingting Cui creates a labor-consuming apparatus that reflects her struggle as a user of the China-net. In response to the limitation of access the artist experienced, Siman Meng juxtaposes the information gathered from two fields of info-sphere in a narrative video.

Driven by the impossibility to gain access to information, while being inside the system, “An Infinite Machine Towards Nothingness”, assimilates Cui’s frustration with the enclosed info-sphere. The interactive apparatus is activated by viewer’s labor, and limits their access for information. While some have privileged access, others do not. Through constructing the piece, she imagines her privileged access as tunnel and cables undersea.

In “How Do I See The Place I was Born”, Siman Meng examines the way in which current Internet based public cartographical applications impact our perception of place. By searching on Google Earth and Baidu Map, the personal place attachment is told simultaneously. She navigates the audience along the path of her migration in the wasteland of data and questions the form of spatial representation proposed by these applications.

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