Sensing Future

Sensing Future / ShanghaiTech University - Photo: lyla

Sensing Future

ShanghaiTech University (CN)

In an age where reality fractures across screens and sensors, Sensing Future is not a distant vision, but a threshold—where perception becomes the ground of inquiry. The future seeps into the present through data, emotion, and design; it is felt before it is known.

Interactive installations, XR narratives, and algorithmic environments explore how we sense—and are sensed—in a mediated world. From brainwave patterns to machine-translated emotion, from scented memory to robotic comfort, each work traces where technology meets the nervous system, where the digital brushes against the fragile.

These are not depictions of tomorrow, but speculative gestures that exaggerate, invert, and rewire. A text becomes an image (txt2img⁻¹), scent transmits emotion (Scentsory), and a farewell is endlessly re-performed (The Last Play).

This space invites audiences to navigate this ambiguity. In times of flicker, delay, and overwhelm, sensing becomes an act of survival—an improvised negotiation with instability. The question is no longer what the future will be, but how we feel its arrival.

POSTCITY, First Floor, Campus

  • Neural Tide

    Yuxiao Wu (CN), Chaoran Wu (CN), Yucong Zhang (CN), DIV Lab, ShanghaiTech University (CN)

    Neural Tide is an immersive installation that examines panic as both a physiological signal and a shared affective state. Visual stimuli elicit varying intensities of response, while participants’ brainwave data are recorded and compared in real time.

  • Scentsory

    Jiaqi Zhang (CN), Luorong Ren (CN), Di Tian (CN), DIV Lab – ShanghaiTech University (CN)

    Scentsory is a multi-sensory interactive installation that translates facial emotion into scent, inviting participants to join in a mediated exchange of affect.

  • txt2img⁻¹

    Yutao Ming GOGO (CN), Peng Chen (CN), DIV Lab – ShanghaiTech University (CN)

    txt2img⁻¹ reframes the logic of text-to-image generation into a reverse choreography of execution. Humans follow algorithmic prompts, shifting from authors to executors in an absurd system. Beneath its game-like surface, the work unfolds a quiet fable of labor, learning, and mediated creation.

  • The Last Play

    Qingxi Hu (CN), Chenfei Liu (CN), Junyi Wu (CN), Chenhui Zhu (CN)

    The Last Play is an XR interactive film imagining death as a designed and consumable experience.

  • Pixel Pals

    Nuoqing Shen (CN), Yufei Zhang (CN)

    Pixel Pals is a media installation that translates individual emotional inputs into collective visual output through swarm algorithms.

Credits

Curated by Prof. Hua Yang and Lyla Zhou Curatorial text: Lyla Zhou

Please note: The program for the Ars Electronica Festival 2025 is still in progress.
We are currently preparing all the information for the website and plan to put the full program online in the coming days – stay tuned!