Rhett Tsai (b. 1995) is a Chinese artist focusing on immersive technologies, video, and experimental video game narrative practices. His work carries a strong awareness of contemporary Asian issues, directly confronting the discourses and power structures shaped by today’s technological revolution, media society, and constructions of cultural identity. Through the use of contemporary digital tools, Tsai constructs alternative histories and speculative worlds that probe the sense of alienation, ambiguous identities, and individual dilemmas.

Rhett Tsai is the winner of the 2023 Lumen Prize “HUA Award” and a finalist at the Independent Games Festival (IGF). Tsai’s works have appeared or are forthcoming at Ars Electronica Festival (AT), the Gwanju Biennale (KR), Loop Lab Busan (KR), the Venetian Arsenal (IT), the National Art Museum of China (CN), Moscone Center (US), Annka Kultys Gallery (UK), Macau Museum of Art (MO), TANK Shanghai (CN), Shanghai Exhibition Center (CN), Inside-Out Art Museum (CN), Watershed Art & Ecology (US), Chicago Art Department (US), Sónar Festival (ES), CURRENTS New Media Festival (US), Intermedia Art Festival (CN), Milan Machinima Festival (IT), Festival ECRÃ (BR), International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (MT), Kortrijk Design Week (BE), and more.

He teaches in the Open Media Department at the School of Intermedia Art, China Academy of Art, and is currently based in Hangzhou, China.

Artist Statement

My media art practice spans experimental video games, CGI films, immersive technologies, and sound. Using game engines, AI systems, and virtual reality, I construct literary virtual spaces that can be watched, wandered through, and read. Beginning with imaginaries of war, technological myths, local cultures, media society, and individual experience, my work asks how technology reshapes our sense of reality, bodily experience, cultural identity, and our understanding of homeland and the future.

Influenced by electronic literature, literary video games, and expanded cinema, my practice explores hybrid forms between games, moving image, installation, and contemporary media art. In recent years, I have focused on the entanglement of AI-generated systems, game archives, images of war, and Asian modernity. I often draw from obsolete digital media, field research, consumed media spectacles, and near-future technological imaginaries, reorganizing them into dark, ambiguous, and grotesque alternative histories or fictional scenarios.

For me, technology is never neutral, but a mechanism for producing reality, entangled with memory, the body, labor, desire, and power. Rather than using technology to imagine a brighter future, my work reveals its cracks, noise, errors, and ghosts. In these virtual worlds, skies, waters, game spaces, AI-generated objects, and artificial light become unstable interfaces connecting personal memory, Asian geopolitics, fantasies of globalization, and repeatedly consumed landscapes of war.

My work revolves around a contemporary sense of exile. As technology, war, and cultural identity reshape how we perceive the world, have we already become inevitable strangers? If so, what homeland have we lost? By creating virtual spaces that can be wandered through, read, and bodily experienced, I seek to reconsider Asia’s past, present, and possible futures.

蔡宇潇（b. 1995）是一位中国艺术家，专注于沉浸式技术、影像、实验性视频游戏的叙事实践。蔡宇潇的实践带有强烈的亚洲问题意识，直面由当今的技术革命、媒介社会以及文化身份构建的话语和权力，他常用当代数字工具构建替代性历史，探讨多重历史叙事下的异乡感、含糊身份以及个体困境。

蔡宇潇是2023年流明奖（Lumen Prize）「華艺数奖」的获得者以及独立游戏节（IGF）的最终提名者。他的作品曾或即将在林茨电子艺术节（奥地利）、光州双年展（韩国）、Loop Lab 釜山国际媒体艺术节（韩国）、威尼斯军械库（意大利）、中国美术馆（中国）、莫斯康展览中心（美国）、Annka Kultys Gallery（英国）、澳门艺术博物馆（中国）、上海油罐艺术中心（中国）、上海展览中心（中国）、中间美术馆（中国）、Watershed Art & Ecology（美国）、芝加哥艺术部门（美国）、Sónar 电子艺术节（西班牙）、CURRENTS 圣达菲国际新媒体艺术节（美国）、国际跨媒体艺术节（中国）、米兰引擎电影节（意大利）、ECRÃ 艺术节（巴西）、ICIDS 国际互动叙事大会（马耳他）、科特赖克设计周（比利时）等展出。

他任教于中国美术学院跨媒体艺术学院开放媒体系，居于杭州。

创作自述

我的媒体艺术实践横跨实验电子游戏、CGI 影像、沉浸式技术与声音。我使用游戏引擎、AI 系统和虚拟现实等数字工具，建构可被观看、游荡和阅读的文学性虚拟空间。我的作品从战争想象、技术神话、地方文化、媒介社会与个体经验出发，追问技术如何改变现实感、身体经验、文化身份，以及人对故乡和未来的理解。

受电子文学、文学视频游戏和延展电影的影响，我持续探索游戏、影像、装置与当代媒体艺术之间的混合形态。近年来，我的实践更集中于 AI 生成系统、游戏档案、战争图像和亚洲现代性的相互纠缠。我常常从过时的数字媒介、田野经验、被消费的媒介景观和近未来技术想象中提取材料，将它们重新组织为黑暗、暧昧、怪诞的替代历史或虚构场景。

对我来说，技术并不是中性的工具，而是一种与记忆、身体、劳动、欲望和权力结构相互缠绕的现实生产机制。我的作品并不试图以技术想象一个更明亮的未来，而是显现其中的裂缝、噪声、错误和幽灵。在这些虚拟世界中，天空、海水、游戏空间、AI 生成物和人工光成为不稳定的媒介界面，连接个人记忆、亚洲地缘政治、全球化幻想和被反复消费的战争景观。

我的作品始终围绕一种当代的流亡感展开：当技术、战争和文化身份的重组不断改变我们感知世界的方式，我们是否已经成为不可避免的异乡人？如果是，那么我们失去的故乡究竟是什么？通过创造这些可游荡、可阅读、可被身体感知的虚拟空间，我试图重新理解亚洲的过去、现在与可能的未来。