ECHOVISION

Jiabao Li & Botao Amber Hu

FILE SÃO PAULO 2026: Inter-creativity – Art and Technology – Augmented Realities
Electronic Language International Festival

EchoVision – China

What is it like to be a bat? EchoVision is a mixed reality art experience that simulates echolocation, immersing participants in the perceptual world of bats. Exhibited in a natural habitat, it shows mixed reality’s potential to foster empathy for non-human species. The work explores eco-phenomenological mixed reality, opening paths for ecological education and more-than-human perspectives through embodiment.

BIO

Botao “Amber” Hu is a social computing researcher and experiential futures designer. He creates projects using social mixed reality and directs the Reality Design Lab, exploring soma, speculative design, and spatial computing.

Jiabao Li is an artist and Associate Professor at Northeastern University. Formerly at UT Austin and Stanford, she creates works on climate, interspecies co-creation, and perception using AR/VR, wearables, robots, performance, and installations.

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.

Light High
The installation LIGHT HIGH is aimed at guiding the perception through targeted acoustic and visual phenomena into border areas in which ambivalent experiences set in and the habitual experience of space is abolished.[…] A mirrored ceiling together with a thin reflecting surface of water on the ground and a grid arrangement of lights are creating the spatial illusion of an infinite vertical space of light and darkness. By traversing a small bridge, the visitor can cautiously discover the immersing endlessness beneath his/her feats and above his/her head.

Array [wave]
Wave depicts a sculptural volume unfolding over time – the Shape of Light seized in perpetual movement. It uses ephemeral and intangible materials – light and sound – and can be traversed by the observer, immersing them into the shapes cast by the undulating light columns. The work creates a malleable experience of scale: it shifts between object and environment depending on the observer’s position inside, outside, or at the boundary of the installation.