"ORLANDO" is a site-specific multi-media installation displayed at Ermita de San Pedro in Aracena, Huelva, Spain, part of the Sierra de Aracena y los Picos de Aroche Natural Park in Andalusia and was created during Grotta Air residency in 2022. The installation encompasses a moving-image work, a porcelain floor sculpture, and a sound composition by artist Si.Jiang.Chen.
The animation employs the neural network - VQ-VAE-2 to simulate biological architectures of organic shapes and mimic their evolutionary process obtained from language. It features a broad landscape of floating pink and white corals projected into the basilica of the church. As a counterpart the precious pure white and hand-crafted parts of the porcelain floor sculpture resemble the animated forms as a skeleton-like artefact from a bygone era. The Japanese artist Si.Jiang.Chen composed intuitively a soundscape of breathing and piano sounds to complement the atmosphere.
The work seeks to explore the continuous flow of time through an expressive landscape shaped by gesture, code, and performance. It sketches out the reality of the past from the remnants that survived to the present and contemplates how language and technological dominations redefine the essence of time and space, transcending appearances to evoke a renewed sense of existence.
