Are we gazing at the same moon?

Are We Gazing at the Same Moon? Are the scenes we observe really within the same time and space? 

The moon has long been a symbol of collective human experience, used in art, literature, and phi-losophy to explore questions of time, space, and memory. Its familiar presence in the night sky connects people across distances, eras, and cultures, serving as a shared point of reference for our thoughts, emotions, and reflections. 

Yet, how much of our experience of the moon is truly shared? What if, despite our collective memory of the moon, the experiences we have when we gaze up at it are more fragmented, more subjective than we realize? 

This artwork creates a ritual of moon-gazing, presenting to the audience a gigantic image of the moon composed of multiple stitched-together fragments. As the camera gradually zooms out from these regions, the scenes outside each fragment are slowly revealed: they do not belong to a contin-uous whole. As the moon disintegrates from a unified whole and then slowly reassembles, the boundaries between individual emotions and collective memory become blurred. 

In astronomical photography, the “Lunar Mosaic” is often used to synthesize high-definition images of the moon. This work is an artistic experiment based on the moon image by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in 1992.

However, the artwork employs generative AI technology to allow artificial in-telligence to imagine the parts of the celestial body beyond the fragments, revealing the dislocation and discontinuity behind the vast whole. By showcasing the parallel existences and possibilities of the moon, it forms a surreal and fantastical picture.

As the world we co-exist shatters into fragments, each derivative following its own trajectories, the image of the moon connects to a various worlds. Yet at certain moments, these scattered possibilities begin to converge and reassemble, merging once again into a coherent whole.

Are We Gazing at the Same Moon? – Shenzhen MOCAUP Light Show at Jinpifang Silos

“Are We Gazing at the Same Moon?” at Tank Art Festival

3 new projects/AI experiments showing at Tank Art Festival in Shanghai, 9.15-9.17 

1. Tears of the Sky – my collaboration with Xi Wang about the eternity of the moment before the catastrophe destroy us. 

2. Are we gazing at the same moon? – a project that argues the collective memories and the continuity of the moon. 

3. Transient – how short can one moment be and how intrusive thoughts affect our perception?