Minghao Zhou.
← All work

Silt Symphony

A digital installation shown in the Spring Undergraduate Exhibition at SAIC Galleries, Chicago.

Role
Artist
Year
2023
Exhibition
Spring Undergraduate Exhibition, April 7–15, 2023
Venue
SAIC Galleries, 33 E. Washington St., Chicago
Platform
PC
Tools
Unreal Engine 5, Maya, Substance Painter, Substance Designer
Duration
About two months
Documentation
Video documentation

About the work

Silt Symphony is a digital installation made for my BFA show. It is built from a single dynamic 3D environment, presented as three perspectives of the same space. I made it over about two months for PC, using Unreal Engine 5, Maya and Substance Painter and Designer, and it was shown in the Spring Undergraduate Exhibition at SAIC Galleries in Chicago.

Concept

The work is made of objects that are inseparable from my growing up in Baoshan, Shanghai, an industrial town built around one of the largest steel factories in China. Through animation, and a poem that I wrote and read in my hometown dialect, I made a memorial for a hometown I love and that is gradually disappearing. It was once full of factories, construction sites, waste gas, smog and countless blue-collar workers.

The piece carries a strange nostalgia: that of a kid who belonged to an industrial world he can never return to in the age of deindustrialisation.

More video