Rhett Tsai_
Rhett Tsai | 120°10'00.00"E, 30°15'00.00"N.
Media artist, digital culture researcher, college faculty.
Health Code Cyborg | 2022
Health Code Cyborg is an AR filter released by artist Rhett Tsai on Spark AR. In this work, the health code that serves as a pass during COVID-19 becomes an augmented reality mask for the viewer, and you can use this green health code mask to talk to others, send social media updates — and others will trust your health status. Health Code Cyborg discusses the restructuring of human hierarchical order and identity by the politics of health in the pandemic era. You can access the following link to play this work on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ar/607529680305400 .
MetaVessel | 2022
MetaVessel is a 3D video work reflecting on the metaverse, in which the main character Joe is about to encounter a flood “OpenSea” caused by the fracture between virtual and reality. In this flood, only the lucky few who successfully board the giant ark “MetaVessel” can survive. Joe and other humans have to undergo virtual reality training, obtain the boarding credential “MetaMask Fox Mask”, and get the positive nasopharyngeal swab test of the MetaVessel to board the ark to survive. The work discusses the collapse of the balance between virtual and reality under the trend of the metaverse, the emerging hierarchical order after being reshuffled by the metaverse, and the new post-human identity after being reorganized by the new order. The nasopharyngeal swab test in the video is also a darkly humorous metaphor for the current reality: is the swab that stabs the nostrils again and again in ordinary life to cause a minimal but important physiological pain the Sword of Damocles for humans to escape from reality and move to the virtual world?