《a poem about tide breath（观潮）》

2025
Installation

Material: Light, air, glass, electricity, code, algorithm and live tide data

ask (sun, moon, earth){
how(water){
rise;
}
}

The work explores the possibilities of machine perception through the act of observing the tide. Presented as a fragment of executable code, the text simultaneously evokes two ways in which humanity has understood tides throughout history: as a physical phenomenon governed by the gravitational relationship between the sun, the moon, and the earth, and as a philosophical question posed to the cosmo through poetic language.

The installation retrieves real-time tidal data from a monitoring station in Venice, where water level is measured by floating sensor and uploaded online every five minutes. An AI system uses these measurements to adjust the pulsing rhythm of the neon word *rise*. Unlike human perception, which is sustained continuous through visual feedback, the tides become invisible to the machine during the five minute gaps of data updates. During these intervals, the system must rely on previous observations and mathematical prediction to construct a speculative model of the water's unseen movement until the next measurement arrives.

By foregrounding the temporal gaps within data acquisition, the work examines how machine perception and cognition are formed through discontinuous encounters with reality. The glowing plasma inside the neon echoes the celestial matter that gives rise to the tides in reality, while its breathing pulse embodies the the imaginary tide of machine, allowing humans to observe.

该作品通过“观潮”这一人性行为，探索了机器感知的各种可能。作品文字以可执行代码的形式呈现，同时指向了人类从古到今理解潮汐的两种方式：科学界受太阳、月球与地球之间引力关系支配的物理现象，与诗文中向自然界提出的哲学问题。

该装置实时获取威尼斯监测站的潮汐数据——当地的浮动传感器每五分钟记录一次水位——并由人工智能根据这些数据调整单词“rise”（上涨）的闪烁节奏。与人类连续的视觉反馈不同，在两次数据读取的间隙，海洋对人工智能而言处于暂时不可见的状态。在这些间隔期内，系统必须依赖先前的观测结果与数学预测，在下一个数据点到来之前，构想出水体那不可见的运动过程。通过利用数据更新的时间滞后性，该作品探讨了机器如何从非连续性接触中感知现实。霓虹灯管内发光的等离子体呼应了引发潮汐的天体物质，而其呼吸般的脉动并不直接表现海洋本身的运动；相反，它体现了人工智能对那片只能间歇性观测到的遥远潮汐所进行的推断性、想象性的重构，也允许人类观测到这片机器想象中的潮汐。

Czok Foundation Gallery, Venice, 2026

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