Zihang Ye

Feast envisions a future of extreme scarcity — a time when, faced with the remains of a colossal being, humanity no longer holds reverence for life, death, or nature. Instead, the focus shifts to how these remnants can be maximally exploited and consumed. In this context, designers become the new butchers, dissecting and fragmenting, transforming biological remains into raw materials.

As a “Butcher Designer”, I focus on the vocal tract of a humpback whale, preserving its natural mechanisms of muscular contraction and resonant cavities. The result is a sound installation. When dormant, it functions as a speaker, playing human music; yet when the user pumps air into the chambers, the whale’s song is artificially revived. The inflow of air alters the soft resonant spaces within, causing subtle, organic distortions in the music, creating an unpredictable “co-performance” between human and relic.

It is an organ, a sculpture, a speaker, an instrument — a product that harbors a latent sense of life ("Living Product"). Through interacting with it, the audience seems to touch a world on the brink of disappearance, engaging with nature’s echo to reflect on death, coexistence, and humanity’s fragile position within the vast web of life.

Feast poses critical questions: In a future of ecological collapse, how will humans relate to other forms of life? Confronted with death and remains, what will become of our sense of perception, ethics, and aesthetics? When nature is fully reduced to design material, will we retain any reverence for life? Or will we lose ourselves amid the cold mechanics of extraction and fabrication?

With a near-pitiful tenderness, the work invites viewers to reconsider the relationship between humanity and nature, sensing the fragility and irreversibility of life through a quiet, unsettling interaction.