Xia Liu & Xiao Zhang

For Whose Will, This Coronation

Artist: Xia Liu, Xiao Zhang

DATE: 2025

Link: https://xialiu.art/for-whose-will-this-coronation

For Whose Will, This Coronation is a real-time generative BioArt installation that utilizes the biological rhythms of six live goldfish to drive a divination system based on the I Ching. At its core, the work explores the concept of algorithmic divination, which is the use of computer vision to capture the random movements of goldfish and discretize this biological contingency into legible trigram symbols via YOLO-based detection and DeepSORT tracking technologies. This conversion from continuous life into discrete tokens serves as a critique of the paradox of control within contemporary predictive culture: the human impulse to govern life through technological mediation, even as the irreducible spontaneity of life continually exceeds the model's grasp.

Within the installation, the aquarium is transformed into an informational hybrid ecology where a divinatory event is triggered whenever any three fish form a tight spatial cluster. This trigger activates a TouchDesigner particle projection on the tank’s surface, making the moment of symbolic output perceptually explicit. Such a sensory moment of certainty reveals a deeper biopolitical logic where control re-emerges as the power of interpretation, representing the authority to decide what counts as an event and what meaning is produced through surveillance, classification, and thresholding. While the fish serve as the generative drivers of the system, they remain structurally asymmetric, withheld from the interpretive authority that defines their actions. This work functions as an ethical crucible, inviting spectators to recognize their own desire for legibility and to imagine a symbiocene future where humans, machines, and nonhuman life coexist within relations that remain partially unknowable.