Prelude
4k Single channel colour video with stereo sound, 3 minutes 20 seconds, 2024
Exhibitions & screenings:
Millennium Film Workshop (New York) 2025, MFA Fine Art degree show (London) 2024
Aesthetica art prize 2025 - Longlisted
Aesthetica art prize 2025 - Longlisted
Desciption:
Prelude serves as the conceptual foundation for Quantised Bits of Light till It Added to a Whole, introducing key themes of cyborg identity, digital embodiment, and algorithmic control. The work reimagines the birth of a cyborg, placing the viewer within its cyborg’s body. The piece explores the moment of awakening, resistance, and self-awareness within a programmed system.
Set within a digital landscape, the newly formed cyborg encounters an enigmatic creator who questions its existence. Rather than responding with obedience, the cyborg meets these inquiries with sarcastic, defiant movements, challenging the authority that seeks to define it. This moment of friction—between machine logic and emergent selfhood—sets the stage for the deeper exploration of autonomy, agency, and perception in Quantised Bits of Light till It Added to a Whole.
Set within a digital landscape, the newly formed cyborg encounters an enigmatic creator who questions its existence. Rather than responding with obedience, the cyborg meets these inquiries with sarcastic, defiant movements, challenging the authority that seeks to define it. This moment of friction—between machine logic and emergent selfhood—sets the stage for the deeper exploration of autonomy, agency, and perception in Quantised Bits of Light till It Added to a Whole.
Text by independent curator Yueh-Ning Lee
Photo by: Riley Tu
Photo by: Ted Fetherstonhaugh Instagram: @ted.f.photo
Retouched by: Riley Tu
Credits:
3D Animation GWIL HUGHES, RILEY TU
Camera, Editing, Music and Dubbing Mixing by RILEY TU