Yaxuan Liao's 'Emotional Algorithm' Explores Algorithmic Emotion Processing
Yaxuan Liao's 2025 video art 'Emotional Algorithm' investigates how computer data shapes human experience by translating emotional lexica into rhythm and sensation. The work avoids visual representation, using light and sound as equivalents of emotions rather than symbols. Viewers are immersed in fluctuating positive and negative emotional signals, experiencing instability and impermanence. Liao treats technical data as a medium of transformation, not analysis, and the algorithm manifests through rhythmic organization of shifting images and sound. The installation at 1215 Gallery presents a holistic system where emotional flow loses individual anchor, becoming shared. The work poses whether empathy is possible with algorithmic emotion processing, suggesting that digital emotions are both generalized and amplified. Liao focuses on human sensory experience between measurability and perception, subordinating technology to artistic task with clarity and discipline.
Key facts
- Yaxuan Liao completed 'Emotional Algorithm' in 2025.
- The work is based on machine analysis of emotional lexica.
- Light and sound function as equivalents of emotions, not representations.
- The internal structure involves fluctuations between positive and negative emotional signals.
- Liao avoids binary opposition, showing instability of emotions.
- The algorithm manifests through rhythmic organization of shifting images and sound.
- Installation view at 1215 Gallery in 2025.
- The work questions empathy in algorithmic emotion processing.
Entities
Artists
- Yaxuan Liao
Institutions
- 1215 Gallery