
Yufan Xie
B.Arch CAFA, M.Arch USC, multi-disciplinary designer/artist practicing at the intersection of of architecture, computational design and electronic music, focusing on multi-sensory narratives and body-space interactivities driven by generative algorithms, 3d printing and spatial computing, involving concepts of sonification, visualization and affective computing.
Since 2019, Yufan’s works have been featured at 2019 Shenzhen Bi-City Binnale(UABB), 2023 Beijing Media Art Binnale(BMAB), 2023 Shanghai Urban Space Art Season, 2021 “Vision Shenzhen” projection show at Shenzhen MoCAUP, A+D Museum Design Awards 2021, Shanghai Digital Futures(CDRF) 2022.
NEWS

2023.10.20 - 11.10
“Sonarium” showing at Shanghai M50 “EVOLUTIONARY SPACE” exhibition
Yufan Xie
Sonarium, a , providing a sense-blurring experience at Shanghai M50
How can spatial and morphological elements be translated into auditory narratives, and how do they resonate emotionally and mnemonically with individuals?
“Sonarium” allows us to “hear” landscapes, prompting contemplation within an artificial auditory ambiance. Within this sonar-vivarium, micro-spatial structures are dynamically translated into sound, offering audiences a unique sensory experience. As the information complexity within the auditory scene accumulates, surpassing cognitive and perceptual thresholds, the connections among interaction, visual cues, and sound start to disconnect and ambiguous.
Technically, it asks – Can visual and spatial messages present as acoustic? Is generative algorithm capable of audio storytelling, not in a visualization way, but using Sonification/Pulsed Melodic Audio Processing concepts?

2023.09.24 - 11.20
“The Maelstrom” is featured in 2023 SUSAS!
Yufan Xie, Mel Lewis, Ziqian Yin, Wei Wu
7.1 channel spatial audio experience, as well as a interactive music installation will be live at SUSAS 2023 in Shanghai. As a multi-sensory ecosystem which reacts to human’s behavior and functions both in time and space, it reveals a new potential of augmented pattern recognition for human in the future.
As a part of “Acoustic Garden ” program, The Maelstrom reflects today’s huge overwhelming forces of data, offering pattern recognition tools of the past, as a means of survival to embrace the inevitable interdependence of a nonlinear future. By recognizing data may serve as a collective memory, actions dictated by the user may take indeterminate inputs of activity and impose patterns through habit. This process of morphic resonance, where systems inherit memory from previous similar systems across space and time, provides the bridge between technology and nature where memory is not a static storage rather an ever-evolving elastic multi-sensory tuning system.
Edgar Allan Poe’s story “A Descent into the Maelstrom” had tremendous influence on the nineteenth-century poets and symbolists like Baudelaire, Flaubert, and others. In this story, Poe imagines the situation in which a sailor, who has gone out on a fishing expedition, finds himself caught in a huge maelstrom or whirlpool. He sees that his boat will be sucked down into this thing. He begins to study the action of the strom, and observes that some things disappear and some things reappear. By studying those things that reappear and attaching himself to one of them, he saves himself. Pattern recognition in the midst of a huge, overwhelming, destructive force is the way out of the maelstrom.
The huge vortices of energy created by our media present us with similar possibilities of evasion of [their] consequences, of [our] destruction [by them]. By studying the pattern of the effects of this huge vortex of energy in which we’re involved, it may be possible to program a strategy of evasion and survival.

2023.06.10 - 06.28
The Unknown Cities is back!
AI & NI Exhibition at 4C Gallery LA
“The Unknown Cities” is an art project created based on the fictional narrative “Nine Cities, Millions of Future” by author Yan Wu. This narrative depicts the process of human civilization returning territory from city back to nature, transforming Earth back into a planet of nature. After going through several enthralling yet troublesome seasons, the protagonist of the story finally finds the appropriate method of this “return”, developing ways to compress, transmit, and expand cities instantaneously onto new locations on new planets. Though the narrative is short, it serves as an encyclopedia of the relationship between humans and architecture, and between humans and cities, showcasing countless city forms and unknown creatures.
Inspired by “Nine Cities, Millions of Future”, “The Unknown Cities” presents four futuristic super-cities in forms of 3D printing sculptures. Some of these forms challenge the basic rules of physics, freely diving underground or rushing into the boundless sky, while others can attach themselves to the bodies of other creatures. As the story arrives at the “Crystal Season”, the Earth’s final season before heading towards eternity, all artificial objects on the Earth start to genuinely shrink, fade, and become transparent… The people in the city, belonging to our generation of humans, will also disappear forever along with this process. However, this disappearance does not signify death – on the contrary, it signifies birth. New relationships between nature and humans, and new forms of cities and architecture, will naturally be created in other parts of the universe.

2023.04.01 - 04.23
Sonarium is featured at BMAB(Beijing Media Art Binnale) 2023
Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum, Beijing
Sonarium is now live on 11 meter media wall, as a part of BMAB event.
Sonarium explores sonification with landscaping and generative forms. User interactions and spatial informations are transformed into generative audio narrative in real-time. As we listen to an acoustic rain in Sonarium, we meditate in the generative landscape. Such soundscape creates an emotional connection between the atmospheric space and audience.

2023.03.31 - 05.31
Skeleton Physarum System and The Maelstrom are featured at “Broken Spring” exhibition.
Tanko Moofland, Beijing
Link: Wechat,
My two experimental research – “Skeleton Physarum System” and “The Maelstrom” will be live at Tanko Moofland. One is an algorithmic system that starts from a messed-up state, and the other is an on-going audible space project.
“Spring is a good time for creativities, but not all of them ends up well, and not all plans match our expectation. Sometimes a project gets stuck and forgottetn in a messed up dump, but sometimes from which new possibilities emerge.”

2023.01.29
Announcing the first show of Sonarium in physical space! Meditate with a full immersive experience of sonification and visualization.

2022.12.23
On December 23rd, SOTI invites various electronic musicians, bands, DJs and visual artists to cancel all the unjustified cancellations with the energy of sound and vision at SYSTEM, Shanghai. 10 electronic musicians forms a sequence titled “CANCELLED LIVE” in the main area “S-tage” while 6 DJs are to perform at a secondary area “丹炉” as the latest installation in SOTI’s LOVEBEATS series parties “LOVE IN SYSTEM

2022.06.25
Presentation at
Digital Futures – CDRF (The 4th International Conference on Computational Design and Robotic Fabrication)
Shanghai, Tongji University
I am going to present our paper “A Slime-Mold System Driven by Skeletonization Errors” on CDRF 2022 conference(The 4th International Conference on Computational Design and Robotic Fabrication) as a part of Digital Futures 2022 on June 26th 11:30 am(UTC+8) / June 25th 8:30 pm(PST)

2021.12.05
Acoustic Garden winning Epic MegaGrants
Epic Games/Unreal Engine
Grad Thesis Acoustic Garden is winning Epic MegaGrants!

2021.11.16
Acoustic Garden featured in A+D Design Awards 2021
A+D Museum Los Angeles
Grad Thesis Acoustic Garden is now featured as Runner-Up in “In School” category of A+D Design Awards.

2021.05.27
The Unknown Cities is featured at Sci-Ficene 2021
Beijing Art and Science Concept Exhibition

2020.10.04
The Unknown Cities is featured at Art NOVA 2020
Guardian Art Center
The Unknown Cities is featured at 2020 Art NOVA 100. Our 3d printed objects will be exhibited.

2020.09.19
On September 19, 2020, the exhibition “Breeze and the Man-made” officially opened at the Hongkun Art Museum. The exhibition brought together 9 groups of young artists and designers to explore the organic interconnection between humans, nature, and artifacts. In addition to exploring in tangible material space, many artists and designers have extended their experiments from the “carbon-based space” to the “silicon-based space”. This has broken the boundaries of time and space, expanded the physical limitations of resources, and extended the multiple possibilities of “sustainability” in the intangible virtual space.

2020.08.04
GAP+ is shortlisted in 2021 YTAA(Young Talented Architect Awards) Asia
YTAA, Venice Binnale 2021
Link: World-Architect, YTAA Official
Grad Thesis GAP+ is shortlisted in YTAA Asia 2020, as a part of the 17th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2021.
The Young Talent Architecture Award (YTAA) is an inherent part of the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award. Organized by the Fundació Mies van der Rohe with the support of the Creative Europe programme and World-Architects as Founding Partner, the first Asia Edition is aiming to promote exchange and cooperation with their counterparts in Europe and in the 2020 guest countries: Brazil, Chile and Mexico. By bringing together the most talented graduates and the best architecture firms and institutions, the Winners of the YTAA will have the chance to find comprehensive strategies enhancing synergies and complementarities with the firms and institutions of their interest.


2019.12.26
The Unknown Cities is live now at Shenzhen Binnale 2019
Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture
The project is series of 3d-printing based on fiction “9 City, Millions of Future” by Yan Wu. The fiction discribed a process of returning territory from city to nature, transitting the earth to a planet of nature. After several fascinating and upset seasons, we finally find a proper way of “returning” and ways to compress, transmit and expanding cities on new planets.

2019.05.26
GAP+ Winning First Place of CAFA Grad Thesis
Central Academy of Fine Arts
Honored to announce that GAP+ is featured as the first place winner and Qianlixing Scholarshp winner.