Read this Q&A as Ruiqi Zhang, Assistant Professor in the School of Visual Studies talks about teaching digital storytelling and his installation exhibition. 

1. As a new professor coming in, what are your favorite parts about teaching students who are interested in digital storytelling?

One of my favorite parts is seeing how students approach storytelling with fresh perspectives, combining their personal experiences and previously learned skills with 3D technologies. Digital storytelling provides a unique space where imagination intersects with technical skills, and guiding students as they transform abstract ideas into tangible, captivating projects is incredibly rewarding.

I also enjoy the collaborative spirit students bring to the classroom. To nurture this diversity, I intentionally create opportunities, such as skill-share workshops and assigning students the role of producers for others’ projects. These initiatives allow everyone to take on the instructor role and contribute to the collective knowledge. I deeply value each student’s unique voice, which is always full of surprises. They continually explore new terrain, offering unexpected insights and practical solutions.

2. Could you tell me the relationship you have between being an educator and an artist?

For me, the roles of artist and educator are deeply intertwined. My artistic practice keeps me grounded in the challenges and joys of creation, while teaching pushes me to articulate my thoughts on art and technology more clearly—something that I can directly share with my students. It’s an ongoing dialogue. I see my role as helping students navigate the complexities of media and storytelling by sharing the insights I’ve gained through my own artistic practice. More importantly, I aim to introduce contemporary art perspectives that encourage students to explore more open or radical forms of expression. This helps them push the boundaries of their imagination and feel supported when creating unconventional or experimental works.

3. What grew your love/passion for practicing in digital technology as an art form?

My passion for digital art was inspired by Nam June Paik and early video artists who critically transformed video into an alternative conceptual container. My journey began with a fascination for how emerging technologies shape our perspectives. Over time, I realized that these tools not only offer new ways to tell stories but also serve as platforms to question the cultural, political, and ethical dimensions of technology.

As part of the screen generation, I grew up immersed in short videos, social media, and video games, which placed significant emphasis on defining online identity and telling stories through emerging technologies and media strategies. My curiosity about digital art drives me to explore new ideas, controversies, and phenomena surrounding digital technologies. I am particularly interested in how people process and interpret complex, multi-threaded, and multi-windowed information and how this mechanism can be applied to create contemporary narratives that resonate with our rapidly evolving world. For me, digital art is not only a tool for storytelling but also a means of questioning and reimagining the ways we engage with technology and each other.

4. Is there a work-in-progress project(s) by you that you want to talk about?

Yes, I’m currently working on a project called The Graceful Site. It’s a live simulation that explores the failures of automation and artificial intelligence while imagining new narratives about post-human labor. The project is set in an abandoned Bitcoin mining facility, where discarded mining machines begin to evolve into sentient creatures. These machines communicate with ravens, acting as surreal intermediaries between the past and the present.

Using a game engine as a narrative container, the project reflects on the traces left behind by workers who once inhabited the space—fragments of memory, objects, and residual data. The mining machine creatures’ journey is both absurd and poetic: they learn to walk, reflect on dignity, and connect with APIs in real time. The inspiration came from Karl Sims’ Evolving Virtual Creatures (1994), which used early AI training as a meta-narrative. This project is my way of questioning how we perceive machines, labor, and the narratives we construct around automation.