Hello, and welcome to my portfolio website. As a multidisciplinary designer, I'm passionate about exploring interactive media design, digital art, and creative direction. My experience in photography has enabled me to incorporate two-dimensional visuals into three-dimensional spaces. At the moment, I'm concentrating on experimental design projects that investigate the possibilities of future interactive visuals.
Sketomy is a creative experimental data visualization application for artists to explore human anatomy. In addition, it helps artists to save time on sketching and learn human anatomy clearly. In this experimental software design, the visualization idea of point line surface is effectively combined with the integration and analysis part of the complex structure and information of human body, which allows users to better understand all kinds of information in a dynamic way and thus improve the cognitive efficiency.
We often express the space of our own existence in three-dimensional form. So what would be the dimension of space after the brain has processed and reconstructed it? With this thought in mind, I tried to recreate the dimensionality in memory in the form of numbers. What would be the intersection and overlap of flat time and the world of awareness in this dimension, and virtual reality might be a powerful tool to reproduce this space-time.
S E A S O N
S E A S O N
R E A L I T Y
Nature is a silent neighbor. Memory Season Reality is the initial chapter of the series "Memory Season". Elements of the real world are also present in the virtual world. Memory is not only "recorded", but also "created". It is a world, even if it is a plant from the virtual world. What is reality? Or also what is virtual?
S E A S O N
I N _ S L
Duhkha, in Buddhism, means suffering. Suffering is a form of self-identity. Humans create their own identity by constantly suffering in their own chain of karma. All these phenomena are part of impermanence. Thinking is a way to create karma. In this game, I try to enter the thinking word, which will become the Duhkha situation. The Buddha in the middle is a reflection of the ego. Every person in the world is a Buddha. Practice makes them Buddhas. This is the eight fold noble path. Everything is Duhkha. emptiness is the real truth.
RIV is a study on visuals and ways to capture visual styles. This project began with the Memo Spectrum project. This project is an experimental process of recording images. I tried to record images in different ways in order to realize and recall a certain visual in the memory. One of them is the pinhole photography method. Pinhole photography has a proper result related to blurred memory visuals. The spectral method is a consistency of memory.
S P E C T R U M
"Re-creation" seems to be the closest to the abstract vision of thinking and far from the objective existence. Although memory has various forms of expression, it is also closer to objective recording and recreation. Starting from traditional media and methods, I have tried a possibility to record the process of recreation. Spectral analysis and memory are very similar. A specific color is a memory of a specific time, and a lack of color is a memory we have lost. I believe that everyone has their own spectrum one-by-one memory spectrum. This exploration is an attempt to create my own "spectrum".
“Survival Kit" is a series of works about the future conditions of living environment. Through the concept of a fully protected "Life Pack", we will understand the complex relationship between nature and ourselves. How can we, as creatures of the earth, remain alive in the future environment.
F O R M
Adults have 206 bones and 639 muscles. Each bone and muscle has different characteristics and structure. I focused on the structure of each bone and tried to make it "manageable". The life form will be changed from the bone to the whole skeleton. I will try to make it an "application" or "plug-in" that will help the user to create the basic structure of a human or animal or even a plant and then export the data to be used in different ways.
S T U D Y
TNF Study is a commercial advertising project for The North Face designed by agency Leviathan. For this project, a realistic environment was needed to be modeled and rendered to match the overall story of the advertisement design. The project included the design of scenes, objects and plants.
> Artist Statement
My work is about data reconstruction and visualization methods in memory. The design focuses on the field of interactive visual patterns between memory-related imagination and visualization in two and three dimensions, and constantly explores different ways of expressing traditional images. I try to realize the visualization exploration in the design process to touch the data in memory. In my early design attempts, the two-dimensional traditional image recording method and the virtual three-dimensional environment built space constructed in the real three-dimensional space is logical, but it is conflicting for the imagination in memory. The interactive spatial model and the integration of multiple elements are the ideal design goals of my current attempts. I try to use different visual approaches, including ancient physical methods and modern digital methods to obtain results full of variations that echo the user's remembered data and image responses.
During the visual exploration process, traditional photographic methods were used to obtain photographs that simulated recalled images and to capture random photographs to mimic the way people record scenes. Computer graphics help me to simulate the space that exists in people's memories, and I try to make it diverse and interactive modes, including triggering reconstruction, random changes and generation, so that viewers can enjoy the possibility of experiencing real 3D space in illogical 2D and 3D ways. The scenes constructed come from our daily exposure to everyday life, as they are conforming to our memory shaping. Gamification of complex interaction patterns has also become a design focus and attempt in the current work project.
In the future, more diversified hardware and software will be used to support future and speculative design ideas to support my design thinking.
> CV
Hello there, I am Jimmy Haixu Zhao. As an interaction designer and a digital media artist, my focus of design is on visual interaction innovation research. Dedicated to deeply exploring the ways of integrating digital technology and traditional media, I am active in the field of innovative design and education, and is committed to the effective expression of innovative design language in the combination of industry, academia and research.
> Brief Résumé
Jimmy Haixu Zhao
– Interaction Designer / digital media artist
* Experience:
2013 – present: Digital Media Designer - (Phils.Design)
2021 – present: Interaction Design & Digital Media Instructor - (PAC)
2014 – 2018: Interaction Design & Digital Media Instructor - (Art Creativity Global)
2012 – 2013: Art and Tech Assistant- (Leviathan)
2011 – 2012: Teaching Assistant- (School of the Art Institute of Chicago)
* Education:
2010 – 2012: School of the Art Institute of Chicago – M.F.A.
2004 – 2008: Central Academy of Fine Arts – B.A.
