Who is Aaajiao
Aaajiao is the online handle for Xu Wenkai. Who coined the name in the years he downloaded mp3s from Soundseek and chatroom users. His username chromatic_corner to ‘A Jiao’ (literally in Chinese: corner).
Aaajiao Deep Simulator
That sense of double play, in which a seemingly straightforward work is laid bare as a labyrinthine critique that feels at once accessible and obscure, comes through, also, in the artist’s latest exhibition, Deep Simulator, at Tabula Rasa Gallery in London (4 June–31 July 2021). The work was first shown in the project room of Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in 2020, marking the artist’s first exhibition at an Italian institution.
In a room set up with a gaming station and standalone. Surreal objects evocative of tree branches rendered by digital algorithm. Aaajiao’s metagame Deep Simulator invites the viewer to partake in a space exploration at once both real and virtual.
The prime engine
Deep Simulator sees computational power as the prime engine that generates the state of our world. The six possible states of Bardo—a term originated from Buddhism that describes the intermediate state between death and rebirth—can be retrieved by the player via six levels of computational power. “Deep Wanderer,” defined as the protagonist of the metagame, is an amalgamated persona consisting of the viewer of the exhibition, the player at the game station, and the wanderer in the metaphorical journey within the simulation. Upon seeing and being the “Deep Wanderer”, individuals such as us come closer to understanding the truth of our existence.
Human Identity
As the artist’s continuous reflection on the evolution of human identity along the transformative power of the Internet sphere, the forming of The Player in Deep Simulation is a transmutative process carried out by the artist over the years. It passes through the figure of The User presented on the artist’s solo exhibition User, Love, High-frequency Trading in 2017, and The Bot as an information crawler for the project bot in 2018. The spectator’s ability to see the player playing while awaiting his or her own turn opens up a path to observe an “other” him- or herself, and underlines the controversial notion of the real in the world of new technologies, the Internet and the circulation of digital data.
It is worth noting that Deep Simulator was specially conceived for the project room of Castello di Rivoli in 2020. Making aaajiao the first Chinese artist to exhibit at an Italian institution. Due to the pandemic, only domestic visitors in Italy were allowed. We hope that through presenting the work for a second time at our London space, the work will be able to reach a broader audience.
source
https://ocula.com/magazine/conversations/aaajiao-nft-blockchain-future/
http://gallerytabularasa.com/exhibitions/page.php?id=31aaajiao-deepsimulator
