Sian Fan
Fine Art MA
Central Saint Martins UAL
Graduates: 2020
Specialisms: Digital Arts / Fine Art / Art Performance
My location: Colchester, United Kingdom
Sian Fan
First Name: Sian
Last Name: Fan
University / College: Central Saint Martins UAL
Course / Program: Fine Art MA
Graduates: 2020
Specialisms: Digital Arts / Fine Art / Art Performance
My Location: Colchester, United Kingdom
Website: Click To See Website
About
Sian Fan is an interdisciplinary artist working in London. She is currently studying a Fine Art Masters at Central Saint Martins, where she has been awarded the prestigious Mona Hatoum Scholarship and has been nominated for the Nova Award. She has exhibited internationally with venues including Tate Modern, British Council, and the ICA, as well as producing work with Channel 4, the BBC and Google. Sian is represented by MT Art Agency.Her work combines movement, the female body and technology to explore embodiment, spirituality and human experience in the digital age.
Drawing on her background in contemporary and aerial dance she suspends, fragments and augments the body via choreography and digital techniques. She works across mediums, combining the physical and the virtual through sculpture, performance, animation, moving image and virtual & augmented reality, and seeks to create works that heighten our awareness of the experience of being online. She is fascinated by virtual identities, and in how we construct virtual bodies which exist in hyperspace beyond our physical bodies.She is concerned with the complexities of spiritual experience and with being human in our increasingly digitised and hyperconnected world. Through her work she hopes to discover new ways for us to coexist with technology.
‘Conduit’ is a digital performance incorporating motion capture with live movement, featuring the artist as the solo performer. It uses an Xbox Kinect sensor mounted directly above the lying performer to capture and translate her movements onto a virtual avatar. The virtual body is projected at the foot of the live performer and appears partially submerged in an inky black liquid. As the physical body extends and writhes, the virtual body emerges from the liquid. The projection acts as a black mirror to reality, reflecting and distorting the physical performance. The work explores the co-dependency between humanity and technology, exploiting human movement to power and animate a virtual avatar. This virtual body becomes a conduit for the expelled physical energy, which is transformed into sharp, glitchy digital movements. The avatar was created using photogrammetry, which is the process of 3D scanning using photography. This created a hyper-realistic digital model, that was an exact copy of the artist. The avatar represents an augmented version of the self, and as such is manipulated, combining it with botanical textures to create a hybrid skin. ‘Conduit’ meditates on the limitations and differences between virtual and physical bodies, particularly in light of our new sensitivity to the fallible nature of the physical body. It explores the differing capabilities of each form, as well our entangled connections to our virtual avatars and to technology as a whole.