Zhe Ren

Living Tree is an interactive work in which a digital tree responds to the presence and actions of its viewers. As the tree grows and transforms, butterflies move through the space, creating a shifting relationship between participant and environment.

I am interested in how artificial forms can begin to take on qualities we associate with living things. Neither fully natural nor entirely constructed, the work exists in a state of continual becoming. Through interaction, boundaries between observer and observed, action and response, become increasingly uncertain.

This interactive work explores the tension between permanence and change. A classical sculpture appears stable until the viewer approaches it. Through interaction, the image fragments and disperses, only to gradually restore itself once the interaction ceases.

I am interested in how forms that appear fixed reveal themselves to be temporary and contingent. Existing in a continual cycle of formation and dissolution, the sculpture reflects on the fragility of permanence and the shifting nature of the forms through which we experience the world.