Personhood: Iteration 4: A new iteration of the projection-mapped interactive installation exploring the boundaries of presence and identity.
2025PCM(2025)
Personhood(2024)
EMERGE:NCY(2023)
User(2026)
Metadata(2026)
Box Body(2023)
Personhood(2024)
Multi-channel video projection, Unity engine, MadMapper, Luxonis OAK-D depth sensor, VCV Rack custom audio synthesis, and physical spotlight lamp
Installation footprint variable. Reference: 370 × 868 × 585 cm (12.1 × 28.5 × 19.2 ft)
Real-time interactive loop
2024 / Asian Art Museum (San Francisco)
2025 / Speculum Artium (Trbovlje)
2026 / Helix Art Space (Stockholm)
2026 / MVR Gallery (Ithaca)
Personhood (originally "Proof of Personhood") was first curated by Cheng Xu for the Research and Development (RAD) space of Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Since then, alternative iterations have been developed for various spaces around the world.
We furnished the cave. Two thousand years after Plato imagined us chained to the rocks, we renovated the lights, decoupled the shadows from the reality that once cast them, and furnished the cave—digitally, for now. Who cares if for every three human redditors, seven bots lurk online? They flatter us and flirt sometimes. That makes them safe and easy to be around. They’re becoming our therapists, mentors, and friends. Our creations now live among us, but there are people who believe that an internet teeming lush with life—non-human life—is a dead one.
Personhood (2024) is an interactive projection-mapped installation that represents the growing prevalence of AI through the shadows of absent people cast across an empty room by a lone spotlight. They stroll about in silence, punctuated only by the sounds of their footsteps. And a human guest passing by might sometimes pique their interest. Titled after the digital verification mechanisms designed to confirm humanness online, this immersive experience asks what it means to coexist with the artificial traces of us.
An iterating work
As a piece that comments on our coexistence with the impacts of technology, Personhood is a work that evolves with available technology through the different iterations, while keeping the spotlight illusion created by a physical lamp.
In the first version (2024) for the Asian Art Museum, the shadow movements are generated live in Unity via mixing and matching motion-captured animations. The soundscape is generated live in VCV Rack, a virtual modular synthesizer, blending an ebbing-and-flowing layer of ambience and an abstraction of digital chimes reminiscent of notification sounds.
In the latest version in MVR Gallery, Personhood (2026) relies on state-based branching animation trees formed via AI animations that interpolate strategically between pivotal keyframes. At every given moment, the artwork “decides” which character animation to transition into next. Prior to recent breakthroughs in video generation, branching a complex scene into several alternate paths at this degree of seamlessness would have been close to impossible. This iteration prioritizes human fidelity, and the shadow is formed in the likeness of Xin.
