Dream of Walnut Palaces
Film
10 m
Director, Writer - Wendi Yan
3D Models - Wendi Yan
Environment Design - Wendi Yan
Animation - Wendi Yan
Skeleton Ghost Character Design, Modeling, Texturing - Haoyue Xu, Zeming Sun
Music Composition - Dasychira
Sound Design - Dasychira
Editing - Wendi Yan
Commissioned by the 6th VH Award, Hyundai Motor Group.
At once an attempt to reflect a possible psyche rooted in historical research, and an effort in turning the narrative upside down, Dream of the Walnut Palaces takes the symbols characteristic of the time period and subverts them: the imperial ship sailing westward carries gifts of Chinese medicinal knowledge; the ship’s sails are made with ornamental laces and printed with Chinese medical illustrations; the magic lantern plays
In her history research, Yan excavated details from secret scientific experiments in Qing China to magic lantern shows in Antoine Lavoisier’s Arsenal, in order to explore the psyche of an individual that didn’t exist, but she wished he did. What if, during the Age of Revolution, a Daoist master brought his wisdom to the Enlightenment scientists that were establishing the rules and orders for the emerging modern science?
Yan turns archival images into 3D models using AI, re-enacts historical illustrations with newly designed character models, and redesigns critical instruments from the time period. The film becomes a speculative historical study of epistemic visuality between China and Europe.
Utilizing the rhetoric of dreams, ghosts and shadows --- strong motifs that emerged from Yan’s history research, this film gives voice to the real ghosts of the Enlightenment: correlational thinking and embodied knowledge, which characterize not only Daoism, but many schools of thoughts and practice around the world now deemed to be “pseudoscience.” In this process of vocalization, Yan asks, what forms of knowledge have gotten lost in the project of modernizing, professionalizing, and standardizing science as we have done? Could a different modernity of knowledge-making have been possible?
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