Based upon multi-year interdisciplinary research on the Buddhist culture of dance in Dunhuang, the Cave Dance project uses data from Dunhuang Dunhuang murals and motion capture of professional dancers to train a machine-learning model and generate a human-computer collaborative choreography of animated movement sequences. Through this process, Cave Dance reconstructs—and reimagines—medieval dances in a contemporary manner.

With photogrammetry, digital modeling, CG animation, 3D printing, and mixed reality, Embodied Architecture creates a multi-sensorial theater of cultural heritage. Combining new media and technology with contemporary artistic expression, the project unfolds the imaginary universe embodied by Buddhist monuments, as well as a spiritual journey of ascension and transcendence.

Shadow Cave addresses a foundational myth of Buddhist art that originated around 400 CE in the kingdom of Gandhāra and inspired a millennium of icon- and cave-making practices across Asia. The project explores issues inherent in the Shadow Cave, such as the nature of images and vision, theatricality and ritual in aesthetic experiences, and dynamics between materiality and transcendence.

More than a spatial enclosure, a temple was seen in medieval Asia as a microcosm sufficient unto itself. Unpacking the artistic and religious underpinnings of Kaihua Monastery’s rich pictorial iconographies, the Digital Temple project uses sensorial media to restage the monastery’s visual and spatial program in ways that activate the experiential dimension of Buddhist culture.

The art film To the Moon reinterprets the artistic and cognitive journey of the ink painter Liu Kuo-sung (b. 1932). As it retraces Liu’s ambulatory life—moving from his birthplace in Anhui, throughout war-torn mainland China, and eventually across the strait to Taiwan—the film unfolds Liu’s ultimate artistic aim: to fill the cold, dark cosmos with the warmth and brightness of a home.