Sunyata

Substance, as the fundamentals to construct a reality, has the characteristics of mass, volume, and material; they can be measured and perceived. That is, our cognition of this world is based on perceiving each and every kind of verity. However, can there possibly exist a different dimension beyond the order constructed by matter? If so, how would such a world make humans rethink their connection with the fabric of space?

Sunyata places virtual technology in a natural environment, which leads the viewer from real dunes to a simulated space, challenging the viewer’s point of view by means of mixed reality and hand tracking technology. Inspired by the concept of “Endlessness” in the “Avatamsaka Sutra“ from the Buddhist view of space; the world is not a single entity. It is a multiplicity of worlds overlapping each other, intertwined, and interminable. Under such context, material space is no longer limited by physics, and “even three thousand worlds can be subsumed into a single grain of dust.”

Sand stands as a metaphor of the material world. Sunyata refers to this, as well as imagery of matter that simultaneously straddles virtual and real space. Tiny grains of sand may have been huge formations, rocky terrain stretching for miles, or caves sheltering our ancestors. After millennia of weathering, they become rocks, then stones, then grains of sand, and eventually particles. In Sunyata, sand acts as an interactive object for the viewer, moving between macro and micro scales, Real and virtual. Asking the viewer: “How is matter possible? How is virtuality possible?”

Taking a Buddhist view of the universe as reference, this work proposes new imaginations of our material world through virtual technology. By using boundary-crossing hardware, ”Sunyata” aims to re-explore communication between reality and the fabricated, nature and the man-made, and ultimately to probe the possibilities of human perception.