Ruiqi Zhang
张瑞麒








































email: info@zhang-ruiqi.com 
instagram: ruiqi_zhang_
about

© Ruiqi Zhang 2024


Ruiqi Zhang
张瑞麒

He is a multimedia artist and educator based in Richmond Virginia. His practice and research press on sensitivity to digital technology when engaged in issues of online identity, media discourse, Internet culture, and critical surroundings. His initial awareness of digital power was formed by and linked through video art, which prompted his further exploration of ideology and cross-cultural experiences in 3D software, moving images, and video installations.

He employed a meandering narration approach to redirect his focus to the potential of reconfiguring autonomy, confrontation, and imagination. Through the organization of various irrelevant materials (3D objects, quotes, found images, theories, and scattered factors) in random juxtapositions, a hybrid stimulus is generated for snap meditation. His idea/method emulates the platform-based algorithmic mechanism, cultivating a non-human-centered perspective to reexamine the locus of our language.

email: info@zhang-ruiqi.com
ins: ruiqi_zhang_
about

Monument Emitter
3D rendered video, 06:16, 2023


“When they trumpeted the meliorative power of beauty, they were stating the belief in its capacity to shape human thought and behavior” (William H. Wilson, 1989). This quotation is from the book The City Beautiful Movement, which introduced an urban planning movement in the United States from the 1890s to the 1920s. The movement emphasizes the significant influence of civic pride and engagement in shaping civic virtue and social harmony. Richmond is one of the earliest cities to adopt a proposal to build a broad avenue with monuments in the City Beautiful manner.

This work recreates some representative monument bases in 3D software and serves as a prompt to review the entrenched narratives related to monuments and the sanitized community consciousness. As the animation evolves, the empty base models are converted into lawn sprinklers, emitting water droplets that expand the scope of these revered objects. The animation is designed as a desktop screensaver that offers a meditative space to reconsider the historical heritage as catalysts for prompting social justice discourse and engagement.

vimeo