As an art mod, Yesterday’s Skybox appropriates and hacks the 2004 video game NBA LIVE 2005 by combining legacy modding tools with contemporary AI systems. The work removes the winning condition from its one-on-one mode, turning it into an endless match between Yao Ming (CN) and Shaquille O’Neal (US). It also reconfigures the camera to bring the normally peripheral sky into view, replacing the original skybox and street-court architecture with AI-transformed textures derived from images of war-damaged buildings and smoke-filled skies.

The project originates from the artist’s childhood fascination with NBA LIVE 2005. Growing up in China, he first encountered America from a distance through basketball, video games, and the screen. The game’s American street courts and synthetic skies became part of an optimistic image shaped by the promise of globalization and a more connected world. More than two decades later, the image of America reaches the artist through a far more complex geopolitical landscape. Across wars and geopolitical tensions circulating through contemporary media, the United States appears in different capacities and contexts. Images encountered online from wars in Ukraine, the Gaza Strip, Iran, and elsewhere therefore enter the work not to represent a single conflict, but as part of this changed image of America and the world around it.

Generative AI translates images of damaged buildings and smoke-filled skies from these online sources into static textures within the obsolete game world. The “skybox” of yesterday thus becomes uncannily aligned with the mediated skies of today. By bringing these two moments into the same audiovisual field and staging a one-on-one match without an endpoint, the work reflects on the rupture between an earlier imagination of globalization and the geopolitical realities through which that connected world is now experienced. Perhaps the endless match no longer belongs only to the game.

In its physical installation, the work is situated within a reconstructed mid-2000s Chinese home computing environment. An aging desktop computer running Windows XP and a period monitor are accompanied by period furniture, peripherals, game guides, and collections of pirated game and system discs—objects once commonplace in Chinese domestic computer culture but now rapidly disappearing. Rather than functioning as nostalgic props, these materials return the modified game to the technological and cultural environment through which it was originally encountered.

作为一件艺术模组（art mod），《昨日的天空盒：〈NBA LIVE 2005〉一对一系统模组化改造》结合早期游戏模组工具与当代人工智能系统，对发布于2004年的电子游戏《NBA LIVE 2005》进行挪用与篡改。作品移除了游戏一对一模式原有的获胜条件，使其成为一场由姚明（中国）与沙奎尔·奥尼尔（美国）进行的永不结束的比赛；同时重新设置游戏镜头，使原本处于常规游玩视野边缘的天空进入主要视野，并以经 AI 转译的战争废墟与烟雾天空图像纹理替换原有的天空盒与街头球场建筑。

作品源于艺术家少时对《NBA LIVE 2005》的迷恋。成长于中国，他最初通过篮球、电子游戏与屏幕，从远方接触美国。游戏中的美国街头球场与虚构天空，成为一种由全球化及「更加互联的世界」的承诺所塑造的乐观想象。二十多年后，美国的形象在一个远为复杂的地缘政治图景中再次通过屏幕抵达艺术家眼前。在当代媒介不断流通的战争与地缘政治紧张局势中，美国以不同的身份与方式出现。因此，艺术家在网络中接触到的乌克兰、加沙地带、伊朗等地的战争影像进入作品，并非为了指向某一场特定战争，而是成为美国及其所处世界的时代意象发生变化的一部分。

生成式 AI 将这些网络影像中的受损建筑与烟雾笼罩的天空转译为老旧游戏世界中的静态纹理。「昨日的天空盒」由此与今日媒介化的天空形成一种诡异的重合。作品将这两个时刻带入同一个视听场域，并构建一场没有终点的一对一比赛，以此回应早期全球化想象与今日这个互联世界所呈现出的地缘政治现实之间的断裂。或许，这场永不结束的比赛，早已不只存在于游戏之中。

在实体展呈中，作品被置于一套重构的2000年代中期中国家用电脑环境之中。一台装载 Windows XP 的老式台式电脑与同期显示器，连同当时的电脑家具、外设、游戏攻略，以及盗版游戏与系统光碟等共同构成这一环境——这些曾广泛存在于中国家庭电脑文化中、如今却正在消失的物件，使被篡改的游戏重新回到它最初被接触和体验的技术与文化语境之中。