Activation:
Micro-Language Models of Art

激活：藝術微型語言模型

5/9-5/24
at MiART Space, Changhua Taiwan

袁一航〇1🚀
Yi-Hang Yuan

Born in 1997, Yi-Hang Yuan graduated from Bath School of Art and Design and the Royal College of Art (RCA). As an artist, event origaniser, and curator, he is active in art scenes across Eastern and Western scenarios.

Yi-Hang’s multifaceted creative practice centres on playfulness, observation, experimentation, and self-exploration. He frequently utilizes utilitarian everyday objects, recombining and recontextualizing them within spatial narratives through both subtle and jarring juxtapositions. His recent works explore themes of personal struggle, social experimentation, interaction, and visual metaphors for contemporary societal structures.

Yi-Hang’s artistic practice is deeply intertwined with his early life experiences, cultural identity, and childhood trauma. His work is dynamic and nodal, responding to immediate lived realities while seeking to connect localized social urgencies with broader historical and cultural frameworks. Through participatory, playful interactions and co-creation, he aims to gently subvert contemporary crises, fostering incremental yet resonant shifts in collective consciousness.

袁一航1997年出生。畢業於英國巴斯藝術與設計學院和英國皇家藝術學院，作為藝術家和策展人活躍於東西方不同的藝術場景中。
袁一航的創作具有多面性，他將遊戲性、觀察、實驗和自我探索作為實踐的關鍵。他的創作通常使用實用化生活用品，並進行組合和再創造，並熱衷於利用這些元素或粗暴或溫和地嫁接於空間敘事內。他近期的創作主題包括表達個人掙扎、社會實驗和互動，以及我們社會的視覺隱喻。
袁一航的創作與他早年的生活經歷、文化背景和童年創傷有著深刻的聯繫。他的實踐是動態的，節點式的，基於對當下生活的感受和思考。他希望通過自己的實踐來感知和理解社會結構和和其緊迫性，並將其與更廣泛、更深刻的資源和背景聯繫起來，從而做出連鎖反應式的改變。他希望讓觀眾通過參與愉悅而輕鬆的互動和共創，柔和而潛移默化的影響和顛覆當下的危機。這是他的文化身份和個性的基礎。他的創作充滿著遊戲性的實驗和創作。這既體現在他的綜合媒介創作中，也體現在以互動為基礎的干預作品中。他通過偶發式的創作手法來詮釋參與和共同創作，他的創作具有適應性，隨著時空而發生轉化。

《Birds Singing in the Woods》

The interactive generation of Birds Singing in the Woods is based on a simple set of rules. Participants scan a QR code placed within the exhibition space to join a group chat on a social media platform, and are asked to turn their phone notifications to maximum volume. The “speaker”, positioned as a “parrot”, participates in the chat as a group member, while all participants are free to send messages at any moment, repeat others’ content, disrupt, parody, interrupt, or contribute in a non-linear manner. Within the exhibition space, an overlapping and irregular chorus of “birdsong” begins to emerge. Through the continuous layering of messages and notification sounds, both the physical space and the digital environment are gradually transformed into a dynamic field composed of language, repetition, and noise.

Birds Singing in the Woods forms part of an ongoing series exploring freedom of speech, social hierarchy, and democracy in the age of networks. Using social media as its primary medium, the work constructs an ongoing system of collective communication, shifting language from an individual act of expression into a distributed group behaviour. Repetition, misreading, and the random generation of information become the fundamental conditions through which meaning is formed. By simulating a non-hierarchical structure akin to a flock of parrots, the work examines how, in an era where authority is destabilised, language operates as a dynamic process, continuously produced, translated, and circulated. It further reflects on the relational structures between the individual and the collective, the physical and the networked, within contemporary society.

《叢林鳥鳴》
《叢林鳥鳴》的互動生成基於簡潔的規則：參與者掃描張貼在展覽空間的二維碼進入社交軟體的群聊，並將手機鈴聲開到最大音量；作為“鸚鵡”代表的演講者以群成員的身份在聊天中發聲，而參與者可以在任何時刻發送資訊，重複他人內容，惡搞，打斷或無序發言。展廳內將響起無序此起彼伏的“鳥鳴聲”。在持續的資訊流與提示音的疊加中，展覽空間與網路空間被逐漸轉化為一個由語言，重複與噪音構成的動態環境。
《叢林鳥鳴》是一系列關於言論自由，社會等級，以及網路時代民主的實踐。作品通過網路社交媒體這一媒介構建一個持續運行的群體交流系統，將語言由主體的表達轉化為群體的分佈式行為。重複，誤讀與資訊的隨機生成成為意義建立的基本條件。通過模擬類似鸚鵡群體的非等級化結構，作品探討在社交媒體時代，在權威被解構後，語言如何作為一種動態過程被不斷生成，轉譯與擴散，並進一步反思當代社會中個體與集體，顯示與網路之間的關係架構。

《dif 07：Birds Singing in the Woods 》

《dif 07 ：Birds Singing in the Woods》 is a collaborative iteration developed with British novelist and activist Sam Jerks, realised in 2025 at Islington Mill, Manchester, UK.

Participants are invited to join a WhatsApp group chat via their mobile phones before entering a darkened space. They are instructed to turn on their notification sounds and set them to maximum volume.

The performance unfolds through the actions of three performers. The artist, dressed in an illuminated uniform, moves through the space, embodying the figure of the “speaker”. The activist joins the group chat as a participant, acting as a “voice” within the system by delivering the core ideas and manifesto of the queer art organisation “dif” through text messages. A third performer, positioned outside the space, reads aloud all incoming content from the chat in an even, mechanical tone, including text, emojis, and images. This voice is broadcast through a speaker fixed to the “speaker’s” mouth.

All participants present are able to contribute equally to the group chat, whether through discussion, casual conversation, or disruptive and playful interventions that intentionally interrupt the flow of the speech. Every message is read aloud and reverberates throughout the space. As a result, the original content of the speech is continuously diluted, reinterpreted, and destabilised within the collective stream of communication. What would traditionally be a hierarchical act of public speaking is dismantled through a form of networked democracy.

Each incoming message triggers a cascade of notification sounds across the space, as participants’ phones ring out in overlapping sequences. These sounds form the sonic image of “Birds Singing in the Woods”. Within this constructed “jungle” of contemporary society, shaped by human presence and digital systems, mobile notifications resemble the calls of birds, constantly echoing yet carrying no inherent meaning in themselves.

《dif 07：叢林鳥鳴》
《dif 07：叢林鳥鳴》是叢林鳥鳴與英國小說家，活動家Sam Jerks合作的版本，於2025年實施於英國伊斯靈頓磨坊藝術中心(Islington Mill, Manchester UK)。參與者被邀請通過手機加入至同一個聊天軟體群組後，進入一個暗空間內。於此同時，告知他們將手機通知鈴聲打開並調到最大。
行為表演的主要內容由三位表演者共同完成：藝術家身穿發光制服在場內遊蕩，作為“演講者”形象的具象化；活動家以聊天群成員的身份加入群聊，化身“喉舌”，在群聊天中以聊天框的形式向在場的參與者宣講酷兒藝術組織“dif”的核心理念與宣言；第三位表演者在場地外用平等機械的語氣朗讀聊天框內出現的所有文字，表情，以及圖像內容，他的聲音通過固定在“演講者”嘴部的揚聲器發出。
在場的所有參與者都可以通過群組平等的發送內容，如討論，聊天，甚至是搞怪內容故意打亂演講進程，而這些內容都被平等的讀出，回蕩在空間內，導致演講內容被直接討論，稀釋，曲解於聊天內容中，應該等級分明的講演被網路式民主解構；每當有資訊發送在群消息，在場所有參與者的手機提示音此起彼伏的響起，構成了“叢林鳥鳴”的意象：在由人和當代社會構建的“叢林”裏，手機鈴聲猶如鳥鳴此起彼伏，本身卻不包含任何資訊。

Artist Notes

I am interested in placing my artistic practice within everyday contexts, using simple interactive gestures, spatial constructions, and installation-based interventions to invite audiences to participate naturally and without instruction.

The notion of play is central to my work. I believe that artistic practice only begins to realise its full potential when it becomes embedded in daily life, transforming into something usable, inhabitable, and adaptable. My works often take the form of objects that can be used, spaces that can be entered, and situations that can be altered, encouraging people not just to observe but to engage and take pleasure in the experience.

I aim to create environments where audiences can move freely, interact, linger, or simply coexist within the work. Through these seemingly ordinary actions, emotions, relationships, and incidental encounters begin to accumulate, forming a continuously shifting and fluid state.

I am particularly drawn to working across different cultural contexts and on-site conditions, where the act of making becomes a way of responding to time, place, and social dynamics in real time. In this sense, the work is not a fixed or completed object, but an evolving experience that is constantly unfolding, extending, and being shaped through participation.

我喜歡把創作放進日常情境中，通過一些簡單的互動式行為，空間構建和裝置介入，讓觀眾自然而然的參與其中。我對藝術中的 “玩”非常在意。我相信我的作品只有變成日常生活的一部分，變成可使用的物件，可進入的空間，可變化的情境，並樂在其中，才能啟動藝術創作的真正意義。我希望觀眾在觀看和體驗我的作品時，可以進入其中，自由的活動，交流或停留，在這些看似日常的過程中，情緒，關係和偶然事件不斷累積，形成流動的狀態。我喜歡在不同文化背景和情境的場景現場創作，以創作的介入去找到和時空，文化的及時回饋與交流。在我這裏，作品不在是一個需要完成的對象，而是一種正在發生，不斷延伸的經驗。