Qianru Yang

I explore the barely perceptible traces of “inframince” that emerge when physical objects and actions are digitized. Through a printed publication and a digital video, I examine how details are lost, hidden, or transformed. I combine scientific methods—drawing on physics and perception theory—to structure experiments, alongside intuitive, practice-led visual exploration, using repetition to reveal subtle differences. My personal exploration includes eight sets of exercises based on gestures, images, and interface behaviors. Each employs a different media translation mechanism to expose tensions between rationality and intuition, control and chance, representation and distortion. These exercises shift repeatedly between digital images and physical materials, emphasizing the “inframince” differences that emerge through replication, translation, and algorithmic transformation. Ultimately, I critique digital representation by returning to physical form, creating a conceptual loop from physical to digital and back to physical. The book format itself reflects this idea—its nonlinear, materially assembled structure exposes the evolution, rupture, and untranslatable residues of information.

I employ diverse media translation mechanisms in my research because, as the project progressed, a reflexive paradox gradually emerged: while I critique the representational loss in digital media, my very method of critique depends on digital tools. Ultimately, this digital critique returns to a physical form—presented through the printed publication, where the "inframince" produced in the transition from digital to physical media is reshaped and re-embodied. The expressive medium itself becomes part of the conceptual loop: physical → digital → digital critique → physical.