“My work is centered on medium itself—it’s how I respond to personal experience, explore technology, and create new forms of expression.”
Engineered Sensitivity in Contemporary Installation
The practice of Ziggy Yang stands at a compelling intersection of installation art, technological experimentation, and embodied interaction, positioning him as a distinctive voice within contemporary new media art. Based in New York, Yang brings together artificial intelligence, kinetic mechanisms, and computer aided fabrication to construct environments that are not passive objects but responsive structures. These works register human presence and transform it into movement, feedback, or visual response, creating situations where viewers become active participants rather than detached observers. Within the broader art world, his work has gained recognition through features in publications such as Our Culture Magazine, Floorr Magazine, and 4N Magazine, alongside multiple A’ Design Awards. This sustained recognition affirms the relevance of his approach within broader discussions of how technology reshapes perception and behavior.
Yang’s installations operate with a clear focus on medium, not only as a physical substance but also as an experiential framework. Materials, sensors, and algorithms are selected with care, yet their significance emerges fully only through interaction. Each system is designed to register subtle human gestures, allowing simple actions to activate complex chains of response. This emphasis reflects a belief that meaning in contemporary art can arise from how a work behaves rather than what it represents. By structuring situations where viewers must act to reveal the work, Yang highlights the often overlooked role of participation in shaping perception.
Across his body of work, a consistent concern emerges with the quiet forces that organize everyday life. Urban rhythms, technological interfaces, and cultural conditioning all surface indirectly through structure and repetition. Rather than presenting explicit narratives, Yang builds environments that encourage awareness of one’s own position within a system. This approach aligns his practice with a lineage of installation artists who treat space as a psychological field, yet his reliance on interactive technology situates the work firmly within current debates about human agency in increasingly automated environments.
Ziggy Yang: Medium as Material and Interface
Central to Yang’s practice is a dual understanding of medium that guides both conceptual thinking and physical construction. On one level, medium refers to the tangible components of his installations, including fabricated structures, electronic systems, and interactive technologies. These elements form the material backbone of each work, demanding technical precision rooted in his background in engineering and design. On another level, medium functions as an interface, shaping how viewers encounter and interpret the installation. The work itself becomes a communicative surface that senses, responds, and subtly redirects attention, making interaction an essential component rather than an optional layer.
This approach emerged through Yang’s academic and creative development, particularly during his studies at New York University. With prior training in engineering and design, he was already fluent in mechanical logic and problem solving. Installation art offered a context where these skills could be redirected toward expressive ends. Interactive systems became tools for translating internal experiences into external structures, allowing emotional tension and curiosity to coexist with technical rigor. Art, in this sense, provided a framework that could accommodate both analytical thinking and introspection without forcing a hierarchy between them.
Today, Yang’s focus on medium continues to define his style and thematic concerns. Rather than treating technology as spectacle, he uses it as a language for examining how humans relate to machines and to one another. The systems he builds are often restrained in appearance, emphasizing clarity over excess. This restraint encourages viewers to notice cause and effect, action and response, and the subtle shifts that occur when a system acknowledges their presence. Through this process, medium becomes both the subject and the method of inquiry.
Cultural Friction and the Logic of Interaction
Yang’s life experience moving between China and the United States has had a lasting influence on his artistic perspective. Growing up in China and later establishing his practice in New York exposed him to differing cultural expectations, social rhythms, and technological landscapes. These contrasts do not appear in his work as direct autobiography or overt symbolism. Instead, they surface through structural tension, where organic references meet synthetic processes and intuitive gestures encounter mechanical response. This sense of in between informs the emotional atmosphere of his installations, which often feel both inviting and slightly uneasy.
New media serves as Yang’s primary method for processing these experiences. Machines and interactive systems become stand ins for broader conflicts, whether cultural, emotional, or structural. Simple actions such as pressing, squeezing, or passing by trigger reactions that feel disproportionate or cyclical, echoing patterns found in urban life and digital environments. Repetition plays a crucial role, suggesting efficiency while also hinting at entrapment. Through these looping behaviors, viewers may recognize familiar habits shaped by technology and social conditioning.
The visual language supporting these ideas is deliberately understated. Yang frequently employs whites, silvers, and neutral industrial finishes that recall laboratory instruments or prototype devices. This controlled aesthetic creates an environment where subtle changes in movement or sound gain significance. Rather than overwhelming the senses, the installations invite close attention, rewarding patience and awareness. In doing so, Yang constructs spaces where cultural friction and personal experience are not explained but enacted through interaction.
Ziggy Yang: Fruit and the Poetics of Release
Among Yang’s works, the interactive installation Fruit holds particular personal significance and offers a clear illustration of his approach. The piece consists of an artificial apple suspended from a silver plated branch, accompanied by a projected figure shown eating apples in a continuous loop. Interaction is simple yet charged. When a viewer squeezes the apple, the projected figure eats. When the pressure stops, the figure spits the apple back out. This direct relationship between touch and response creates an immediate feedback loop that is both playful and unsettling.
The power of Fruit lies in how it transforms a familiar gesture into an emotional exchange. The act of squeezing becomes a trigger for consumption and rejection, suggesting cycles of pressure and release that extend beyond the physical action. Yang has described his attachment to this work as rooted in its ability to externalize internal pressure that resisted verbal expression at the time. The installation offered a way to materialize feelings through interaction, allowing the system to speak where words could not.
Within the context of Yang’s broader practice, Fruit exemplifies how minimal means can yield complex resonance. The materials are modest, the interaction straightforward, yet the experience lingers. By inviting viewers to participate in a loop that mirrors compulsion and relief, the work reflects the psychological dimensions of technological mediation. It also underscores Yang’s broader commitment to creating installations that listen closely to human presence, responding with clarity while revealing the subtle forces that shape inner life.
