Shuxin Zhang

This experimental film visualises the Daoist principle of “Dao generates all things”（道生万物） by creating an abstract life-form that embodies the Dao itself. Using Blender and Touch Designer as the primary tools, the work renders a central “Dao-body,” upon which shifting landscapes, textures, and forms emerge and dissolve. These transformations illustrate the Dao as a generative force, constantly producing and absorbing the ten thousand things.

The film unfolds in three chapters—Primordial Becoming, Resonance, and Oneness —each designed as a self-contained cycle. Together, the chapters form a recursive loop: the ending of the third chapter connects seamlessly back to the beginning of the first. This circular structure echoes the Daoist notion of endless return, where creation and dissolution are not linear but perpetual and interdependent.

Sound plays a key role in shaping this immersive experience. AI-generated audio blends with environmental field recordings, weaving digital tones with natural resonance. The result is a hybrid soundscape that erases boundaries between the artificial and the organic, underscoring the film’s theme of coexistence between technology, nature, and humanity.

Rather than presenting a linear narrative, The Ethernal invites viewers into a meditative encounter with the rhythms of creation. It proposes that the algorithm, can be understood not as a mystical or authoritarian force but as part of the recursive unfolding of the cosmos. The work thus positions itself as both a philosophical reflection and a sensory experience of Dao’s generative presence.