By Cansu Peker

Ziyi Zhang is an art director and multimedia artist whose work bridges the poetic and the political, the emotional and the technological. Since beginning her professional journey in 2021, she has approached the creative industry with curiosity, openness, and a strong collaborative spirit. Grounded in both art and technology, Zhang’s practice blends dreamlike, romantic aesthetics with thoughtful reflections on humanity, social issues, and global concerns.

Her work often emerges from a deeply personal space; intertwining memories, emotions, and introspection, while also responding to the broader realities of the world around us. By balancing these two perspectives, Zhang creates immersive experiences that explore the connections between individual lives and collective challenges.

Her work has been exhibited internationally, including in China, Singapore, the United States, and Europe. In 2023, her projects were showcased at the Ars Electronica Festival Campus Exhibit in Austria, Chelsea in New York, and Singapore’s iconic Ten Square building.

We asked Ziyi about her art, creative process, and inspirations.

Can you tell us about your background as a digital artist? How did you get started in this field?

My journey into digital art began unexpectedly through volunteer work while I was in Singapore, where I spent over 190 hours immersed in entertainment, performing arts, museums, and galleries. This experience exposed me to a diverse range of interactive and digital artworks that left a profound impact on me. I was particularly fascinated by large touch screens in public spaces and autostereoscopy works on building facades.

To further hone my skills, I pursued a BFA in Interaction Design at Nanyang Technological University, where I received comprehensive training in the field. Currently, I am expanding my expertise through the MPS in Virtual Production program at the Martin Scorsese Virtual Production Center, where I explore innovative approaches to seamlessly merge the physical and digital worlds.

What began as a simple interest has evolved into a powerful means of expressing my imagination through digital media. I've discovered that this field offers endless possibilities. The creative process brings me lots of freedom and joy, as each project becomes an opportunity to push boundaries, explore new concepts, and bring ideas to life.

Your work merges dreamlike and poetic elements with social issues. What inspires this balance between the personal and the global?

My work often draws from a deeply personal space, weaving together memories, emotions, and reflections. At the same time, I’m also aware of the world we live in — the challenges we face. Balancing these two perspectives allows me to explore the interconnectedness of personal experiences and broader societal issues.

I find inspiration in the contradictions of our existence — beauty and destruction, resilience and fragility. Through poetic narratives, I aim to create immersive experiences that invite viewers to reflect on their place within these complexities. Whether addressing topics like climate change, or digital identity, I believe art has the power to spark empathy and provoke dialogue.

*Timeless Beginnings: A Clock Tower Tribute to New Life in Singapore*

You describe your work as blending emotion and reason. Can you share an example of a project where this balance was particularly important?

In Digital Soul & Data Metamorphosis, I explored the delicate balance between emotion and reason. This project premiered in Singapore in 2024 and was later exhibited at Chelsea Rocket Gallery in New York.

In this artwork,

"Each butterfly is a piece of my soul. Within each butterfly, data is stored.
When two butterflies collide, two stories meet.
This collision creates new stories with the help of artificial intelligence...
As artificial intelligence develops, my soul starts to generatively evolve in the virtual space... "

This work explores the interaction between data and human emotion through digital forms and coding. Each digital butterfly symbolizes a fragment of my soul, storing data of my encounters. When they collide in the virtual space, their stories intertwine, and AI generates new narratives, resulting in a continuous evolution of experiences.

The project integrates data recording, coding and real-time rendering. Despite its digital form, the data within the butterflies carried warmth, with each collision merging emotional fragments to reflect the unpredictability and beauty of human experiences. Through this, I explored how digital entities can embody personal memory and emotion.

The output is a collaboration between machines and humans. When the cold precision of logic collides with the warmth of human emotion, what sparks will emerge? Technology breathes life into the work, but it is the emotional resonance that truly brings it to completion.

As an art director and multimedia artist, how do you transition between commercial and personal projects?

I see both commercial and personal projects as opportunities to tell meaningful stories — just in different languages. When I work on commercial projects for clients, I focus on aligning my creative vision with the brand’s identity and audience. It’s about problem-solving with a clear goal, using design thinking and technical precision to deliver high-quality outcomes.

On the other hand, personal projects allow me to be more experimental and introspective — they often begin with a question or emotional impulse and evolve through artistic exploration. I use those moments to push boundaries, test new technologies, and reflect on topics I deeply care about, like climate crisis or identity.

What enables me to transition smoothly between the two is my adaptability, while staying true to my core artistic standard — being responsible for each project and loving the one I'm working on. Ideas and skills from personal projects often enrich my commercial work, and vice versa.

*The Voice of the Heart, the Melody of the Violin*

Your work often reflects on humanity and social concerns. Are there specific issues that you feel particularly drawn to exploring?

My work often revolves around themes of humanity and social issues, serving as a constant source of inspiration and motivation for my creative expression. I feel fortunate to contribute, uplift, and spark meaningful conversations through my art. Several topics resonate deeply with me:

Self-Love and New Beginnings: "Timeless Beginnings: A Clock Tower Tribute to New Life in Singapore" is a project that uses a clock in downtown Singapore to mark the passage of time by celebrating new births in the city. It symbolizes the beauty of new beginnings and the continuous cycle of life. The project is now expanding to different cities, to use clocks to celebrate life’s moments on a global scale.

The Collision of Cultural Heritage and Emerging Technology: Cultural heritage has always been a profound source of inspiration for me. In "AI Grottoes", I utilized AI technology to recreate the artistic style of the Dunhuang cave murals, blending contemporary photographs and news images with ancient aesthetics. This project questions if contemporary technology like artificial intelligence can bridge the past and the future, ensuring cultural narratives endure in new forms.

Climate Crisis and Environmental Awareness: The climate crisis and environmental change are issues I deeply care about. They will play a central role in my upcoming works through immersive storytelling and thought-provoking visual narratives.

Have there been any surprising or memorable responses to your work?

I love seeing children explore my work, often just touching it with pure curiosity! It makes me so glad to see them interested in interactive media and the images I’ve created and encountered. This inspires me to continue making art, and I also hope I inspired them as well.

How do you see extended reality arts evolve in the future?

Graduating in 2025 from MPS in Virtual Production, I believe virtual production is an advanced and constantly growing technology that uses XR technologies like mixed realities. With development in real-time rendering, motion capture, and volumetric capture, artists and creators can construct hyper-realistic environments and characters that respond dynamically to real-time inputs.

This technology facilitates a seamless integration of realistic environments into virtual spaces, enabling the output of those virtual experiences into lifelike, tangible results. By bridging the gap between the physical and digital worlds, virtual production unlocks endless possibilities for storytelling and immersive experiences, redefining how we engage with art and narratives.

*NYU Tisch Martin Scorsese Virtual Production Center. Photo by Kasey O’Brien*

What is a profound childhood memory?

When I was around 14 years old, I had a lot of imagination. Having practised Latin dance for many years, I often experimented with merging it with various creative ideas — pairing it with classical music, adding elements of magic shows, designing costumes, and even creating set designs. Looking back, I’m not sure if any of those concepts would be understood now! It was a lot of here and there, but I’d say those experiences still influence me a lot to this day!

What is a fun fact about you?

I enjoy dyeing my hair and have experimented with various colors, but now I’m back to black.

What’s the most important concern in your art-making progress?

Most concern in my art-making progress is open to ideas, and knowledge…Don’t limit myself to only the 3D world, but also open to other fields.

While continuously exploring interdisciplinary fields such as arts management, interactive media, and gaming, I have come to see technology as a language — once you learn it, it opens the door to a whole new world. These studies have shaped who I am today and will continue to influence my future. Through a cross-disciplinary perspective and hands-on experience, I keep expanding my boundaries, integrating knowledge from various fields into my creative practice, allowing technology and art to converse and generate new possibilities.