Project

The Flower Vase Girl

Tools

Arduino
p5.js
MadMapper
Generative AI
Physical Fabrication
Video Production

Description


The Flower Vase Girl is an interactive installation that reconstructs a cultural illusion into a system of gaze, control, and complicity. Through projection mapping and sensor-based interaction, the work transforms a human face into an object of display—shifting between stillness, seduction, and distortion in response to the viewer’s proximity.



                 

Overview


The phenomenon of “flower vase girls” embodies a chilling intersection of commodified suffering, gender oppression, and societal voyeurism. These performances, which falsely depicted women contorted into porcelain vases, symbolize both cultural nostalgia and the exploitation of female bodies. Though later revealed as illusions using mirrors and props, their unsettling implications persist as potent cultural and feminist critiques.

Using projection mapping, generative AI, and sensor-based interaction, the project reconstructs this human fragility and objectification. It dissects layered fears—biological, societal, and gendered—revealing humanity’s troubling tendency to exploit suffering for entertainment. It compels audiences to reflect on how historical oppressions echo into modernity and to question their own gaze and responsibility.




At its heart, the work asks: can empathy and awareness disrupt cycles of exploitation, or does voyeurism inherently perpetuate systems of objectification?




Interaction 


The sculpture uses sensors to detect the audience's distance and is connected to Arduino and p5.js to switch the projection content, music, and light based on the changes in distance. At 3 meters, 2 meters, and 1 meter, the audience will see different transformations of the Flower Vase Girl.

This is a brutal, absurd unraveling of pain, where suffering is consumed, deconstructed, and re-packaged as “enjoyment”.





    Physical Structure



    The installation combines a sculptural head with a vessel-like enclosure, referencing the visual logic of containment. Materials are intentionally direct and tactile, preserving a tension between illusion and exposure.







    Projection

    Projection is tightly integrated with the physical structure. A concealed short-throw system ensures uninterrupted viewing, while manual mapping adapts the image to the irregular surface of the sculptural head.






    Credits

    A project by Qian Mu


    Sculpture made with Arduino, p5.js, Midjourney, Runway.ML, MadMapper, and physical


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