“We believe creation is a dynamic process of co-construction—built through time, dialogue, and shared presence.”
Murmurs of the Invisible: Reconnecting the Body and the Environment
WHYIXD is a Taiwan-based media art installation collective that fuses technological sophistication with poetic sensibility to explore the delicate interaction between humans and their ecological surroundings. Established in Taipei in 2011 by Fancy Yeh, Zih Jing Wei, and Jay Chuang, the collective has grown into a multifaceted team of around twelve members. Their practice draws heavily on Taiwan’s abundant ecological textures, translating fleeting, often-overlooked natural signals—like wind currents, light variations, or water rhythms—into sensory artworks that challenge and expand conventional perception. Through the integration of real-time environmental data and digital programming, they develop immersive installations that function not only as art pieces, but as experiential conduits linking digital abstraction with lived bodily experience.
The founders’ backgrounds in art, architecture, design, and engineering form the structural backbone of WHYIXD’s cross-disciplinary approach. For them, creation is not a linear act rooted in aesthetic repetition or technical refinement; it is a continual process of redefining mediums and conceptual tools through constant dialogue. Rather than fixating on a singular artistic signature, WHYIXD views each project as an opportunity to negotiate the boundaries between different vocabularies—materials, spatial logic, viewer engagement, and even the fundamental assumptions about what art can or should be. This results in works that often defy strict categorization, operating simultaneously as installations, instruments, and metaphysical inquiries into how people relate to the world around them.
The team’s evolution traces back to their time as graduate students at Taipei National University of the Arts. Immersed in an era marked by an explosion of digital images and information, they found themselves drawn instead to the tactile, the physical, and the bodily. Before forming a collective, each member explored diverse artistic languages—from interactive performance to chemically reactive materials. Exhibiting their work internationally, they honed their ability to adapt and iterate installations on-site. These early experiences fostered a shared ambition—not merely to produce individual pieces, but to build an enduring structure capable of supporting ambitious, collaborative, and evolving projects. Registering officially in 2011, WHYIXD became both a creative engine and a container for long-term experimentation.
WHYIXD: Between Wind and Light, Data and Emotion
WHYIXD’s work is often described by audiences and curators as imbued with a quiet, lyrical quality—what some have called “poetry in motion.” But this poetic dimension isn’t a stylistic goal; it’s a natural outcome of their intuitive engagement with the imperceptible dynamics of the world. Their process typically begins with faint, easily missed cues: the trembling edge of nightfall, a fleeting gust, or the way light dances across surfaces. These subtle influences are not necessarily visible but are emotionally resonant. WHYIXD channels such signals into multi-sensory experiences that invite the viewer to move beyond passive observation and into participatory perception—where space is not just seen but felt.
The collective refers to this overarching ethos as “Future–Nature Synergy.” Far from being a mere theme or aesthetic motif, it’s a working principle that orients their projects toward reestablishing intuitive, bodily relationships with the environment. In a world where technology increasingly distances people from direct contact with nature, WHYIXD’s installations seek to reverse that trajectory. By using physical forms powered by digital data, they create spaces where abstract technological information becomes tangible, and where natural processes are reintroduced into everyday perception through immersive engagement. The installations serve as mediating bodies—spaces where fiction and reality, emotion and mechanism, coalesce.
Two works exemplify this approach with clarity and depth. Tender Soul of Ocean transforms live wind data into luminous waves, inviting viewers to step inside and physically sense the unseen forces shaping the environment. This piece cannot be captured in static imagery; it must be walked through, breathed in, and experienced as a choreography of light and air. In #define Moon_, a kinetic structure simulates the moon’s drifting edge in the night sky—not as a literal representation but as an invocation of interior stillness. The piece evokes a quiet, meditative presence, asking not for interpretation but for immersion. These works speak less to resolution and more to resonance, offering the audience a momentary pause within the overwhelming rhythm of modern life.
An Architecture of Collaboration: Building Space for Thought and Experimentation
WHYIXD’s studio is as intentional as their installations, functioning as an architectural extension of their creative philosophy. Occupying an entire urban floor in Taipei, their open-plan workspace is filled with wide communal tables, a compact material lab for rapid prototyping, and a transparent meeting room that anchors the space visually. Every area is interconnected—physically and conceptually—facilitating a constant flow of conversation, iteration, and shared discovery. This spatial design reflects their belief that creativity flourishes not in isolation, but through sustained interaction, spontaneous exchange, and collective presence.
Distraction, an inevitable byproduct of such openness, is not seen as a problem to eliminate but as a rhythm to negotiate. Rather than enforcing strict rules or spatial separations, WHYIXD relies on an evolving sense of group awareness. Over years of working together, team members have developed subtle, unspoken cues—migrating toward quiet corners when concentration is needed, adjusting volume or movement organically in response to others. This adaptive rhythm is born from trust and familiarity, not protocol. It underscores the group’s conviction that creation is not merely task execution but a living dialogue shaped by empathy, timing, and attunement to one another’s needs.
Material is another essential collaborator in WHYIXD’s process. Their projects rarely center on a fixed medium; instead, materials are selected according to the specific conceptual demands of each work. Metal often forms the structural frame, but the expressive content comes from a constantly shifting range of textures and surfaces—optical films, light-responsive plastics, or experimental composites. Taiwan’s vibrant industrial ecosystem plays a vital role in this process. Collaborations with companies like CHENG MEI MATERIALS TECHNOLOGY CORP. and LIQUIDLEDS have allowed the group to explore the narrative potential of materials typically used in manufacturing or technology. For WHYIXD, these materials are not neutral supports; they are active elements, shaping and being shaped by the works they inhabit.
WHYIXD: The Moon as Method, the Ocean as Memory
The work that marked a profound inflection point for the collective is #define Moon_, first created in response to a university commission. Originally intended as a festive light piece, the team instead proposed a fully original kinetic installation, and were granted complete creative freedom. What emerged was a haunting, silent sculpture of motion and light—a suspended form that simulates the moon’s blurred edge using precisely calibrated mechanics and timed illumination. It was a moment when WHYIXD moved from responsive design to generative authorship, crafting an artwork that embodied their emerging artistic identity. The piece was later acquired by Bauhaus Plaza in Beijing’s 798 Art District and has since toured widely, anchoring their creative journey in both critical and emotional terms.
From that moment onward, the team committed to producing at least one new major work annually that interrogates the evolving dynamic between human systems and ecological forces. That self-imposed cadence has become the heartbeat of their practice, giving rise to a body of work that is as philosophically consistent as it is formally diverse. Their ongoing investigation into what they call “sensorial memory” finds expression in the evolving series Tender Soul of Ocean. First presented in Keelung in 2022, the project uses wind data to generate shifting light formations, creating a meditative experience that links climate, memory, and physical space.
The latest iteration, Tender Soul of Ocean: Recall, deepens this approach by integrating generative soundscapes and audience-responsive elements. Developed in collaboration with German sound collective Kling Klang Klong, the piece will premiere at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz and the Taiwan Sound Art Festival. Unlike earlier versions, this one responds to both environmental data and audience movement, transforming viewers into co-creators. The project has transcended the boundaries of a single installation to become an ongoing platform—part climate elegy, part digital ritual, and part speculative design. For WHYIXD, it is not simply about creating artworks, but about constructing sensorial frameworks where memory, matter, and motion merge to suggest new ways of being in the world.
