Organizers

Institute for Contemporary Art and Social Thought, School of Intermedia Art

Department of Open Media, School of Intermedia Art

Speaker

Liu Xin

Moderator

Liu Tian

Event Overview

Xin Liu is an artist and engineer developing Cosmic Metabolism, a conceptual and material framework examining the transformation, circulation and degradation of matter across technological and planetary systems. Her practice works within the entropic aftermath of scientific and industrial entropic, foregrounding exhaust as a generative state: rocket fragments falling back to Earth; cryogenic vessels suspending matter; genomic code rendered as unreadable scripture; plastics dissolving under enzymatic digestion; satellites logging their own obsolescence.

Speaker Biography

Xin Liu (b. Xinjiang) is an artist and engineer. 

Her practice works within the entropic aftermath of scientific and industrial ambition, foregrounding exhaust as a generative state: rocket fragments falling back to Earth; cryogenic vessels suspending organic matter; genomic code rendered as unreadable scripture; plastics dissolving under enzymatic digestion; satellites logging their own obsolescence.

Her work operates across material and algorithmic systems. On the material level, she traces how matter is extracted, transformed, and degraded through processes of accumulation, decay, and redistribution. In parallel, she develops computational systems that enact these dynamics algorithmically, generating patterns of growth, erosion, and emergence through local rules and distributed interactions. Across both domains, Liu treats matter and computation as continuous substrates through which metabolic processes unfold.

Taken together, Liu develops Cosmic Metabolism as a conceptual and material framework that investigates the transformation, circulation and degradation of matter across technological and planetary systems.