Simulation Hypothesis

In Simulation Hypothesis, Zhestkov equally seeks inspiration in pre-historic cultures of cave art and ancient bas-reliefs. He plays with a visuality that precedes written language, from a time in which early humans used clay to make vessels and figurines.
The artist uses the inspiration from ancient forms of art and transforms it into digital sculptures using simulations and algorithms based on principles of nature.
The show takes viewers on a conceptual journey, immersing them first in Clouds of Creation, a large-scale projection that recreates the Big Bang, and then guiding them through micro manifestations of this transformative moment of genesis.

Stealth Technology of Ancient, Cosmic Pantheons

FILE 2024 | Aesthetic Synthetics
International Electronic Language Festival
Michael Sadowski (aka derealizer) – Stealth Technology of Ancient, Cosmic Pantheons – Austria

An abstract painting in motion, with colors and shapes exploding and transforming to the rhythm of the music. The dynamic element is not trapped in a static image, but can unfold in time and space.

Bio

Using Stable Diffusion, a visual synthesizer, the artist turns fantasies into videos using just a PC, similar to the invention of printing 600 years ago. Exploring the interplay between software algorithms that create visual worlds and the artist’s mind guiding this process is incredibly exciting. Unlike traditional cinema, there is no ‘reality’ or humans involved, making it a satisfying medium for creating visual art.

Credits

Visuals: Michael Sadowski
Music: Stealth Technology of Ancient, Cosmic Pantheons by The Intangible

Epistēmē
Titled with the Ancient Greek word for knowledge and understanding, the installation is born of the belief that we absorb knowledge through the senses, with the skin acting as an interface between the body and the world around us. ‘To illustrate the skin in states of transformation, I imagined it as a canvas for sensations felt and information absorbed. The digital manipulation in each film melds body and sensation, skin and material, reality and virtuality to express the effects of each product,’

Ryunosuke Okazaki 001
For his graduate project from the Tokyo University of the Arts, Ryunosuke Okazaki created a collection consisting of three couture dresses in bold colours and shapes titled JomonJomon that are informed by Japanese Jōmon-era pottery and Shinto, an ancient religion that originated in Japan. The striking designs are modelled and decorated on Jōmon-era pottery, where vessels were decorated through pressing rope and coils into wet clay to create ornate designs. The JomonJomon collection was made using polyester, cotton and ribbed knits, in red, blue, black and white as the primary colours.

Great Chain of Being
FILE FESTIVAL
The great chain of being, an ancient philosophical concept, attempted to explain the structures and relationships of the world as a form of hierarchy or set of strata. This philosophical idea is here expressed in the form of the entities that constitute the contemporary world. The philosophers of the past believed that the structure of the world had at its top a god, and that beneath there were angels, animals, plants, and elements. But this conception of the world, as a result of the changes in civilization and culture, resulted in the elements that constitute the world undergoing a transition and sustaining an unforeseen hierarchy. The works of art depict the contemporary structure in the form of robots, machines, people, animals, and virtual or digital entities. Within virtual systems, these entities undergo a process of creation, arrangement, use, disposal and recycling, through which they emerge and disappear. The work depicts the stories emerging from these processes, against the background of a systemically designed landscape akin to a factory.
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EONTA
“Eonta (beings) is so entitled as a homage to the ancient Greek philosopher and poet Parmenides. The original printed form of the title word is Cypriot orthography of Creto-mycaenean origin, lost for over 24 centuries and only recently deciphered. Eonta, written in Berlin during 1963-64, was first performed at the Domaine Musical concerts in Paris, conducted by Pierre Boulez, in December 1964. It makes use of stochastic music (based on the theory of probabilities) and symbolic music (based on logistics). Some of the instrumental parts, notably the piano solo at the opening, were calculated on an IBM 7090 computer at the Place Vendôme, Paris.”
(Iannis Xenakis)

Replica
We begin with a tour of a virtual 3D model of the London house-cum-museum built by 19th-century architect Sir John Soane. The journey traverses the five floors of the museum’s meticulously restored rooms, each filled with original and duplicate fragments of antiquity. Sir John Soane (1753-1837) was one of the foremost British architects of the Regency era, a Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy, and a dedicated collector of paintings, sculpture, architectural fragments and models, books, drawings and furniture. Soane was awarded the Royal Academy’s prestigious Gold Medal for Architecture, as a result receiving a bursary (funded by King George III) to undertake a Grand Tour of Europe. His travels to the ruins of Ancient Rome, Paestum and Pompeii would inspire his lifelong interest in Classical art and architecture. As an enthusiastic collector, later in life he began to repurpose his home at Lincoln’s Inn Fields as a Museum for students of architecture. With a collection containing thousands of objects ranging from Ancient Egyptian antiquities and Roman sculpture to models of contemporary buildings, Soane’s house had become a Museum by the time of his death.

She Falls For Ages
MACHINIMA
This sci-fi retelling of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) creation story reimagines Sky World as a futuristic, utopic space and Sky Woman as a brave astronaut and world-builder. It begins on an ancient, alien world whose culture centres on the care and reverence for the beautiful, energy-producing Celestial Tree. The central figure of the tale is Otsitsakaion, a telepath. more…

Sonic Mountain
As a unique site-specific commission for the Donum Estate, Los Angeles-based artist Doug Aitken has created the ethereal work Sonic Mountain (Sonoma), three concentric circles of suspended stainless-steel pipes whose differing lengths form a wave at their base, mirroring the free Euler-Bernoulli shape that describes the chime’s frequency. Installed in the eucalyptus grove, measuring forty-five feet in diameter and twice human height, and comprising 365 chimes — one for each day of the year — Sonic Mountain (Sonoma) works with one of Donum’s most persistent elements, the Carneros breeze that cools the grapes and creates a temperate zone for growing Pinot Noir. Each day, the warm wind begins its soft whisper, rustling through the vines and trees, building in strength through the day until mid-afternoon, and then gradually diminishing in force. Known to have been used since at least the ancient Roman period in Europe and the second century in India and China, wind chimes create chance, inharmonic music. At Donum, Aitken has teamed up with his friend the composer Terry Riley to compose chords in the chimes to be played by the wind , depending on how it blows, so the lyrical work sounds throughout the estate, demonstrating the artist’s practice of making installations that synthesize many media and are never constrained by tradition.
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Спенсер Finch
سبنسر فينش
斯宾塞·芬奇
스펜서 핀치
ספנסר פינץ’
Спенсер Финч
In Finch’s universe if you wait a few hours, the sun may very well change a leaden hue into gold. Like the ancient practitioners of the hermetic arts, who saw changes as the most fundamental truth of the universe, the artist doesn’t always provide an answer in his investigations. For Finch art can do more; it can “ignite our capacity for wonder.”

No Longer Write – Mochiji
Powered by artificial intelligence’s Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), the collected works from ancient Chinese Calligraphers, including Wang Xizhi, Dong Qichang, Rao Jie, Su Shi, Huang Tingjian, Wang Yangming, as input data for deep learning. Strokes, scripts and style of the masters are blended and visualized in “Mochiji”, a Chinese literature work paying tribute to Wang Xizhi. Wang is famous for his hard work in the pursuit of Chinese calligraphy. He kept practicing calligraphy near the pond and eventually turned the pond for brush washing into an ink pond (Mochi). The artwork provides a platform for participants to write and record their handwriting. After a participant finished writing the randomly assigned script from “Mochiji”, the input process is completed and the deep learning process will begin. The newly collected scripts will be displayed on the screen like floating ink on the pond, and slowly merge with other collected data to present a newly learnt script. The ink pond imitates process of machine learning, which observes, compares and filters inputs through layers of image and text, to form a modern edition of “Mochiji”.
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不再写 – Mochiji
以人工智能的生成对抗网络（GANs）为动力，将王羲之、董其昌、饶捷、苏轼、黄廷健、王阳明等中国古代书法家的作品作为深度学习的输入数据。向王羲之致敬的中国文学作品《麻糬》，将大师的笔触、文字、风格融为一体，形象化。王先生以对中国书法的刻苦钻研而著称。他一直在池塘边练习书法，最终把洗笔池变成了墨池（麻糬）。艺术作品为参与者提供了一个书写和记录他们笔迹的平台。参与者完成“Mochiji”中随机分配的脚本后，输入过程完成，深度学习过程将开始。新收集到的脚本会像池塘上的浮墨一样显示在屏幕上，并与其他收集到的数据慢慢融合，呈现出新学到的脚本。墨池模仿机器学习的过程，通过图像和文本的层层观察、比较和过滤输入，形成现代版的“年糕”。

GoatMan

I tried to become a goat to escape the angst inherent in being a human. The project became an exploration of how close modern technology can take us to fulfilling an ancient human dream: to take on characteristics from other animals. But instead of the ferocity of a bear, or the perspective of a bird, the characteristic most useful in modern life is something else; being present in the moment perhaps.

Anyway I ended up in the Alps, on four legs, at a goat farm, with a prosthetic rumen strapped to my chest, eating grass, and becoming a goat.

Odysseus und die Badegäste
Weit entfernt von den traditionellen pastoralen Szenen, die durch den Titel der Ausstellung hervorgerufen werden, hat der in New York lebende Künstler im Museum für kykladische Kunst in Athen eine helle und minimalistische Serie kinetischer Skulpturen beschworen. Für die neuen Werke ließ sich der Künstler von Ancient inspirieren Griechenland. Dies geschah nicht nur durch die Titel seiner Arbeit, die sich mit den Namen von Charakteren aus The Odyssey befassen, sondern auch durch die Erforschung der Eigenschaften der Protagonisten. Abstrakt und rätselhaft bringt Paul Chan die philosophische Verbindung des antiken griechischen Denkens kunstvoll mit eine moderne und zuordenbare neue Umgebung. Odysseus ‘Drang, nach dem Trojanischen Krieg in seine Heimat zurückzukehren, und die Art und Weise, wie er die Reise steuert, werden zu einer ergreifenden Metapher für zeitgenössische Erfahrungen.

Throne
This work attempts to express that premonition as an immense “floating vacant throne”. If instances of power and authority have ruled since ancient times, and the pyramids provide one example—we must ask what the future will hold. Created with reference to the forms of festival floats and portable shrines that appear in the rituals and festivities of the East, the sculpture fuses today’s 3D modeling techniques with gold leaf applications that date back to ancient Egypt. In the frontal center is an empty room, space enough for a 2 to 3-year-old child to sit, suggesting that the new intelligence is still in a young state. Shining, spherical mirrors placed at the center in front and back. Made of platinum foil, they represent “the eyes overlooking the world”, where the frontal one faces the future and the back reflects into the past.

Limited Spaces N2
On approaching the piece, the viewer must mount a bicycle and start pedaling at a suitable and steady speed — only then will the projection of a film onto the screen start. In order to watch the film to the end one has to continue cycling without stopping. This work is built around a performance, produced by two actors: a man riding a bicycle and a woman, who, concealed behind the screen, moves depending on the man’s velocity, unintentionally creating changing reliefs which resemble sculptures. The abusive nature of the relationship embodied in the performance clearly draws on the ancient Greek myth about sculptor Pygmalion and his “artwork” Galatea on the one hand, and on the other references more contemporary feminist discourse, something to which the artist is far from being indifferent. The faster the man pedals, the faster and more forcedly the woman moves. Few trained artists could withstand such a speed.

Oscillations
“Oscillations” presents a group of statues made of bronze, alabaster, marble and stone, placed in a large and immersive installation. The statues represent ancient, prehistoric Venus statues, which give voice to an era 15’000 years ago, when women explored for the first time the power of psychoactive substances and the journeys of the mind. Humeau navigates between worlds with these Venuses as they are speaking statues: their voice create a space of oscillation between the human world and spirits world, taking the visitors with them in this sort of shamanistic ritual.

Liminal Beings
Liminal Beings explores the concept of automaton and the different anthropomorphic forms and functions embedded within its ontology. Automata, since ancient times, have been standing on the verge of two states, developing machinic and human characteristics simultaneously – in reality, and in the collective consciousness. They are trained to execute and learn respective actions and procedures, thus creating an uncanny, awkward state, trapped in limbo between diverse conditions of existence.

ODYSSEUS AND THE BATHERS

Far from the traditional pastoral scenes that are evoked by the exhibition’s title, the New York-based artist has conjured a bright and minimalist series of kinetic sculptures at the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens.For the new works, the artist drew inspiration from Ancient Greece. This was not only through the titles of his work, which play on the names of characters from The Odyssey, but also through an exploration of the characteristics of the protagonists.Abstract and enigmatic, Paul Chan artfully brings the philosophical tethering of Ancient Greek thought to a modern and relatable new setting. Odysseus’ drive to return to his home after the Trojan War, and the way in which he navigates the journey, becomes a poignant metaphor for contemporary experience.

朱利安·奥利弗
줄리안 올리버
ג’וליאן אוליבר
ジュリアン・オリバー
Джулиан Оливер
Levelhead
FILE FESTIVAL
LevelHead is a spatial memory game. The game takes its inspiration from the “Philosphical Toys” of 18th/19th century Europe and the memory systems (“memory loci”) of the ancient Greeks. levelHead uses a hand-held solid-plastic cube as its only interface. On-screen it appears that each face of the cube contains a little room, each of which are logically connected by doors. In one of these rooms is a character. By tilting the cube, the player directs this character from room to room in an effort to find the exit. Some doors lead nowhere and will send the character back to the room they started in, a trick designed to challenge the player’s spatial memory. Which doors belong to which rooms? There are three cubes (levels) in all, each of them connected by a single door. Players have as a goal to move the character from room to room, cube to cube, in an attempt to find the final exit door of all three cubes. If this door is found, the character will appear to leave the cube, walk across the table surface and vanish. Then the game starts over.

RuShi
如是 (RuShi) means “as is”. Nothing more or less, but the true colors. It’s a piece of contemplative immersive installation art, where in using the ancient Chinese metaphysic algorithm, “八字” (BaZi). Yet take out all the extra cultural signs & materialistic interpretations, remain only the “Basic”, i.e. the 5 elements (gold/ wood/ water/ fire/ earth). Participants type in their date & time of birth, the fortune-telling algorithm turns out showing only the unique ones’ flow of colors. We can see no prediction of life from this machine, but only time & changes.

HYMN
Based on Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Hymn of Cherubim, the work explores in an abstract way the relationship between man and machine, ancient and modern, harmony and chaos. By associating the harmonic purity of the voices with the almost tangible intensity of lasers, HYMN invites us to a timeless journey, where sound and light are transformed into an immersive, intense and sensitive experience.

Atmospheric Forest
Atmospheric Forest is a large scale VR point-cloud installation that visualizes and sonifies the relations between the forest and climate. It reveals the interaction patterns between the pine-tree emissions in Pfynwald, an ancient Swiss Alpine forest, and weather conditions in this valley, effected by drought. The trees do not only produce oxygen, but they are living bodies who breath too. I.e., they emit part of carbon dioxide, sometimes even up to 20 perc. from what they have consumed. When trees die, they release all the carbon they have collected during their lives back into the atmosphere. Atmospheric Forest explores the effects of drought on local forest ecosystems, and how such stress situations influence production of resin and volatile emissions (such as usual pine-tree scent).

MOL
MOL (2018) takes up the ancient technique of memorizing information by placing symbols and signs along a mental path through an imagined house from room to room. Interested in the way technology affects both our sense of and need for memory, Nymann attempts to capture her own active and associative thinking by reconstructing her path through her abandoned childhood home. In the work, she visualizes her past experiences through the placement of anchor objects—which, according to the ancient Greco-Roman method of loci, shape the way we perceive the external world—suggesting that in our increasing reliance on technology to memorize for us, we allow others to form our view of the world.

Regisole
Spriggs’ ‘Regisole’ is inspired by the ancient equestrian statue of the same name originally erected during the 3rd century AD for a Roman Emperor in Ravenna, Italy. ‘Regisole’ means ‘Sun King’. Regis is Latin for king, and Sol means the sun. The original ‘Regisole’ was destroyed after the French Revolution since it was seen as a symbol of monarchy. Spriggs’ positioning of the police officer and horse accurately represent the description of the positioning of the original ‘Regisole’, such as with the outstretched hand of the officer in the ‘adlocutio‘ position (Latin: addressing) exercising power and authority.

CRUDE

Crude oil, in all of its manifestations as energy, petroleum, natural gas, plastics, medicine, asphalt, fertilizers, and pesticides, is the principle industrial commodity and the world’s most valuable natural resource. An ancient substance, crude oil is continuously reborn in its applications and implementations. Molodkin’s incorporation of crude oil into his works provokes an open dialogue on how culture and geopolitical systems are influenced by oil. In one of his constructions, Molodkin analyzes the concept of democracy through the universal vernacular of oil.

菲力浦 畢斯雷

Hylozoic Ground

The project’s title refers to ‘hylozoism’, the ancient belief that all matter has life. Hylozoic Ground offers a vision for a new generation of responsive architecture. The Hylozoic Ground environment can be described as a suspended geotextile that gradually accumulates hybrid soil from ingredients drawn from its surroundings. Akin to the functions of a living system, embedded machine intelligence allows human interaction to trigger breathing, caressing, and swallowing motions and hybrid metabolic exchanges. These empathic motions ripple out from hives of kinetic valves and pores in peristaltic waves, creating a diffuse pumping that pulls air, moisture and stray organic matter through the filtering Hylozoic membranes.

Neotenous dark dwellers
Lygophilia
Lygophilia weaves together mythologies and sciences, history and future, fears and desires, continents, cultures, humans and non-humans. Lygophilia folds and unfolds the stories carried by those fascinating creatures that are the Mexican Axolotl and the Slovene Proteus.
From immortality to regenerative medicine — both animals are, as adults, in a state of “eternal youth” (neoteny) showing extraordinary longevity and regenerative abilities that put them at the centre of ancient myths as well as current cutting-edge scientific researches.

Phoenix International Media Center
According to Architect Shao Weiping, the design of the building resembles DNA-like double helix that has been wrapped into a loop.[4] He adds that the circular contours of the Phoenix complex echo the yin-yang symbol of ancient Chinese philosophy. The Phoenix Centre is notable for being an experimental building designed by a domestic firm.[5] Within the doughnut-shaped exterior “shell” are two conventially-structured interior towers.

Opera A Flowering Tree
A Flowering Tree was inspired by Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and is based on an ancient folktale from India, telling the story of Kumudha, a poor but beautiful girl, who in order to help her family transforms into a flowering tree, whose blossoms bring her both joy and pain, love and redemption.

OMPHALOS
In ancient Greek Omphalos means navel as in navel or center of the world. Jalet’s creation examines the question of origins. The choreographer reflects on the human predicament and life in the cosmos, a recurrent theme in his work. For his first Latin American creation, Jalets brings together an ensemble of 20 dancers who perform to the music of Marihiko Hara et Ryūichi Sakamoto. This stunning performance makes light of gravity and instability, unfolding at the very edge of empty space. Exceptional event: the only performances in France as part of a world tour.

TETRAGRAMMATON
A dialogue between these two artists on themes of myth, ritual and meaning, as much about their exhaustion and propensity to bewilderment as any potential they may inhere, for recuperation for and by language, culture and society.Joey’s work, ‘Religiously observant’, is inspired by alchemical and occult ideas, the world of spirits and hallucinations. The wall print features a gold CGI blazon of the Tetragrammaton It references the Sumerian mythology of the Annunaki a race of ancient chthonic fertility Gods, subsequently inscribed in a series of publications by Zecharia Sitchin (a kind of elder statesman of conspiracy theorists worldwide) as descendants of aliens, who enslaved the human race to extract gold from the earth.John’s work similarly ranges over territories of opposition: between ancient and contemporary; mythic and kitsch; between the viscid and primordial. It takes as its subject the vector of congealment, in the Marxist sense of the way labour power is congealed in commodities and so forth, extending this metaphor into an aesthetics of myth and ritual, emptied out, flattened, compacted like a sedimentary layer of anthropocene garbage, for the post-historical epoch.The sound component provides an aural complement to this structure of refuse, exhaustion and abjection. Mixing pre- or -post-linguistic utterances, grunts, groans, screaming: a kind of secular glossolalia chaotically interwoven with whalesong, deep techno and political oratory.

ammonite washbasin
This unique washbasin by HighTech Design was inspired by the spiral shape of ammonite shell. In case you didn’t know, Ammonites are an extinct species of free-swimming molluscs who lived in the ancient oceans around the same time that the dinosaurs walked the Earth and disappeared during the same extinction event[…]

the Valley of the Gods
Valley of the Gods weaves together three narrative threads, mixing with the world of myths inspired by the Indian tribe legends about the ancient hero Ullikummin. “I am fascinated by the beauty and poetry of this mythology. It illustrates the contrast of primitive America with the current, equally surreal culture of America’s myth. With the culture of mass media and dreamed-up film illusions. It is summarised, among others, by the phrase ’sky is the limit’, demonstrating that everyone can become enormously rich”, director Lech Majewski said in a statement.

Empyrean: In ancient cosmologies, the Empyrean Heaven, or simply the Empyrean, was the place in the highest heaven, which was supposed to be occupied by the element of fire (or aether in Aristotle’s natural philosophy). The word derives from the Medieval Latin empyreus, an adaptation of the Ancient Greek empyros (ἔμπυρος), meaning “in or on the fire (pyr)”

Empyreum  (The Divine Comedy, Gustave Doré )

The Empyrean was thus used as a name for the firmament, and in Christian literature for the dwelling-place of God, the blessed, celestial beings so divine they are made of pure light, and the source of light and creation. Notably, at the very end of Dante’s Paradiso, Dante visits God in the Empyrean.

理查德·杜邦
리처드 듀퐁
Manipulating 3-D scans of his own body on the computer, Mr. Dupont then marries digital fabrication methods like rapid prototyping and computer numerically controlled milling with traditional plaster casting and other laborious hand work to make figures that can appear both archaic and futuristic. One of his standing nudes, similar in posture to the Kouros statues from ancient Greece, appears to melt into ripples when viewed on one axis, suggesting the psychic experience of man in the modern world.

Reflection
REFLECTION is a collaborative project with “Printemps Homme” in Paris, inspired from Chinese ancient gardians, such as lions, dragons and Kylins. The image of these powerful creatures brings some traditional elements while creating some taste of future.

بوب ويلسون
鲍伯·威尔逊
בוב וילסון
ロバート·ウィルソン
밥 윌슨
БОБ УИЛСОН
Odyssey (Οδύσσεια)
The great epic work of ancient Greek poetry tells the story of Odysseus’s journey home after the Trojan War and what happens when the hero arrives at Ithaca. It is a transcendental tale that has always been the symbolic text par excellence about human adventure and the wanderings of existence in a harsh but exciting world.
Robert Wilson’s encounter with Homer is one of the major artistic events of this season. One of the most influential and acclaimed artists in world theatre brings his own unique approach to the material. The sensitivity, inventiveness and imagination of the great American director resonate with the Homeric spirit, creating a spellbinding new theatrical language. Eighteen carefully chosen performers and Wilson’s own internationally renowned collaborators bring all their artistry to bear on this unique venture, which is intended for all audiences, regardless of age or experience of the theatre.

ماثيو موناهان
마태 복음 모나한
マシュー・モナハン

Matthew Monahan’s work presents a futuristic archaeology. Drawing from a wide range of influences, from Modernist art to ancient totems, Monahan’s ‘artefacts’ are both familiar and strange. Filtering historical mythologies through his own personal system of reference, altered further through the experience of making, Monahan’s work alludes to a contemporary spirituality, where beauty and brutality coalesce as virtual monuments.

The Overall Effect of Flying with the Wind
Chen Qi has applied watermarked prints, woodcuts, books, installations, videos and other various media in his “Notations of Time” of 2010. In his new creations, he continues his exploration into “time”, “life”, “existence” and other basic issues with his off-screen language. Thus, his “Flying with the Wind” can be taken as an extension of his general concept of “Notation of Time”, as well as being closely related to his water-based printmaking which is a continuation of the infatuation with the traces of objects from Chinese wash paintings and the ink rubbings of ancient stele inscriptions.

野城
Kong Shanshui – 空山水
The base of the installation consists of layers of white stones which fill the ancient palace’s courtyard, echoing peaceful, meditative gardens. On top of the stones are piles or gatherings of petri dishes, some ten thousand in total, stacked in various forms, resembling miniature hills, mountains and rock formations.

shan-shui city
The ‘shan-shui city’ (the city of mountains and water) is one of MAD’s latest projects which will be build in guiyang. It came from a concept which dates back to ancient times of the mountain-water worship, followed by wu zixu’s idea (5th century BC) of locating cities by observing the earth and examining the water, and the emperors’ locating cities on the strategic place of the surrounding natural environment for defense.