SOMA身书
#Artificial Intelligence # Data Poetics # Digital Cultural Heritage
Author：Haoxuan WANG, Zirui WU
SOMA is an interactive art installation that reimagines traditional Chinese calligraphy and Shan Shui (mountain-water) painting through embodied interaction and generative AI. The name SOMA derives from the Greek word for "body," while "somatic" in English means "of the body or flesh," underscoring the central role of human gestures and presence in the creation of cultural narratives.
By transforming body movements into fluid calligraphic strokes and voice inputs into poetic landscapes, SOMA invites participants into a multisensory dialogue between tradition and innovation. Through Variational Autoencoders (VAEs) and Large Language Models (LLMs), the system translates human expression into evolving forms that blur the boundaries between the physical and the digital, the ephemeral and the enduring.
Through this embodied exploration, SOMA reflects on the continuity of cultural heritage as a lived experience rather than a static artifact. It presents tradition as a fluid, generative process—one shaped by the rhythms of movement, the resonance of voice, and the interplay of human and machine. By engaging participants in this immersive co-creation, SOMA envisions a future where art evolves through the dynamic convergence of body, technology, and cultural memory.
3rd Digital Intelligence Art Fair | Sichuan Cultural and Art Center · Chengdu
Shaw Auditorium | HKUST, Hong Kong
ACM link：https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3773699.3774711