Agartha
2024
Video (15:13), video game, genealogical painting 

The work, set against the backdrop of "Agartha," blends media archaeology, documentary materials, field investigations, and science fiction imagination. It visually articulates, discusses, and critiques the specific patterns of connection between entities (including plants, animals, humans, and silicon-based organisms). The work indicates that the entire world shapes its existence through diverse, accidental, variable, or erroneous links. It also highlights potential material and spiritual dangers within today's ecosystems, encompassing natural, political, and media ecology.

阿加尔塔
2024
视频论文 (15:13)，电子游戏，谱系图

作品以“阿加尔塔”为背景，揉合媒介考古、文献史料、田野考察以及科幻想像，对物与物（包括植物／动物／人类／硅基生物）之间的具体连接模式进行视觉化的表述、讨论与批判。作品表明整个世界是在多元的、偶然的、变异或者错误的链接中形成自己的存在，并指出了当今生态系统（包括自然、政治、媒介生态）中潜在的物质和精神危险。


What is Agartha? 
According to ancient Indian texts, Agartha passes through the depths of the Atlantic, connecting the continents of Europe, Asia, America, and Africa. It is said to have secret exits in Mexico, Turkey, China, India, Spain, and other locations. This is a mysterious underground world, a realm of boundless unknowns. As stated in the epigraph of the work, it serves as a metaphor, symbolizing the thematic essence of the piece.

什么是阿加尔塔？
据印度古籍记载，阿加尔塔穿过大西洋底，连接欧、亚、美、非各大洲，并在墨西哥、土耳其、中国、印度、西班牙等导留有秘密的出口。这是一个神秘的地下世界，一个拥有无限未知的世界。如作品的题记所说，它是一个隐喻，用来作为作品主题的象征。

Part I: Video
第一部分：视频

In the opening section of the video essay of Agartha, the work presents the landscape of the "Tree Alliance" in the Petén-Veracruz moist forest of Guatemala (the connections and nutritional sharing between trees) and the social behavior of the Peruvian rattlesnake, introducing concepts from early alchemical literature such as "conjunction," as well as contemporary sociological concepts like "network" and "collective." By drawing parallels between the interconnections among plants, insects, and animals, and the connections among humans, the work unfolds a ecological political imagination. 

在“阿加尔塔”视频论文的开始部分，作品呈现了危地马拉佩滕森林的“树盟共和”（树与树之间的连接和营养共享）以及秘鲁响尾蛇 “身体社交”的景观，引出早期炼金术文献中的“conjunction”，以及当下的“网络”、“集体”等社会学概念。通过植物、昆虫、动物之间相互链接，并与人类之间的相互连接的进行比拟，作品展开了一个生态政治学的联想。

It also simulates a cross-species communication experiment in the Virgin Islands in the 1960s and the attempts of the silicon-based entity "April," as a member of CityDAO, to achieve a certain form of "decentralization" through interconnectedness.

作品也模拟了六十年代在维尔京群岛的一项跨物种沟通实验，以及硅基人“阿普里尔”作为CityDAO的成员，为链接的“去中心化”所作的某种尝试 。

The work depicts humanity's obsession with "Connecting the Dots" game. From Quipu (Record keeping through knots) to relay stations, from signal fires to utility poles, from Morse code to radios, from telephones to submarine cables. The work illustrates that the connections in the world manifest in multiple structures—poetic, ecological, economic, and at times political. This includes cross-border infrastructure, the One Belt One Road Initiative, deglobalization, geopolitics, neo-nationalism, conflicts and wars, communities, or isolationism. Human society is continuously in a state of linking and unlinking, forming its existence within diverse, open, accidental, variable, erroneous, and ambiguous connections.

作品描写了人类对于“连连看游戏”的痴迷。从结绳记事到驿站传输，从烽火台到电线杆，从莫尔斯密码到车载无线电，从telephone到海底电缆。作品表明世界的连接表现在多重结构中——诗意的，生态的，经济的，有时是政治的。包括跨境基建，一带一路，去全球化，地缘政治，新民粹，冲突和战争，共同体或者孤立主义，人类社会正处在不断的链接和断链中，在多元、开放、偶然、变异、错误和晦明晦暗的链接中形成自己的存在。 

The work intertwines the theories of Matthew Fuller's Media Ecologies, Bruno Latour's Politics of Nature, Graham Harman's Object-Oriented Ontology, and Timothy Morton's Dark Ecology. Through visual forms, it explores a world of intertwined and connected entities, replete with contradictory and opposing concepts in the realm of actor-network. Through the application of the speculative "Internet Pigeon Network (IPN)" in the Gaza region, the piece showcases the connections between biology and communication. It raises questions about the potential for reopening various unknown links through this imperfect solution.

作品将马修•富勒的《媒介生态学》、布鲁诺·拉图尔《自然的政治》、格雷厄姆·哈曼的《面向对象本体论》以及蒂莫西·莫顿的《暗黑生态学》的连接和断链理论放在一起，用视觉的形式讨论了一个万物交织、万物连接、充斥着矛盾与对立概念的行动者网络世界。作品借由推想中的 “鸽子网络（Internet Pigeon Network）”在加沙区域投入应用，展示了生物和通讯的链接，并由这个不完美解决方案，叩问重新打开各种未知链接的可能性。 

At the end of the work, the audience is brought to the realm above Agartha. "The world has simplified to just a garden," where all entities, whether on the ground or in the sky, including those heterogeneous and fragmented connections, are controlled by some mysterious force. They sway with the wind, interlinked and embraced. However, in the unseen distance, in the obscured gray zone, a dangerous wind is blowing. Using Fuller's language, the piece reminds us of the material and spiritual dangers concealed in today's ecology, lurking in the shadows of life.

在作品结尾，观众被带到了阿加尔塔之上。“世界简单到只剩下一座花园”，所有的物，地上的，天上的，包括那些异质性的、断裂的连接都被某种神秘的力量控制着，它们随风入梦，相链相拥。而在看不见的远方，在被遮蔽的灰色地带，正飘来一阵危险的风。作品用富勒的语言，提醒我们今天的生态中隐藏着的物质以及精神的危险，这些危险正隐藏在生活的幽暗之处。

Part II: Video Game
第二部分：游戏

The game part of "Agartha" uses the classic "Connect the Dots" mechanism, where players link different objects with beams of light to construct complex connections in order to complete the tasks of each level (a total of 14 levels).

“阿加尔塔”的游戏部分使用了经典的“连连看”游戏机制，玩家通过用光束连接不同的物体来构建复杂的连接，以完成每个关卡的任务（共14关）

Part III: Genealogical painting & Character list
第三部分：谱系图 & 角色列表