Quiet Night Thought

Yuri reflects on the essence of existence, expressing the belief that the world often feels unreal and detached from true authenticity. As the boundary between reality and virtuality grows more pronounced, it creates an increasingly stark dichotomy, drawing attention to ideas of animism and challenging how we engage with the world around us.

She does not perceive the digital world as a mere representation of reality, but rather, when she encounters something in the real world that she first experienced through anime, she sees reality as aligning with what she has seen digitally. Her sense of reality is not necessarily grounded in the physical world.

 She distinguishes between ‘real’ and ‘reality’—the former being physical and objectively verifiable, while the latter is shaped by personal experience and perception. Even if something no longer exists in the physical world, it can still hold meaning and presence in one’s subjective reality.

Project explores how editing personal photos to rewrite narratives blur the line between authentic and fabricated memories. We often use images to store memories, but with tools to easily crop, edit, and modify them, the original memory can change. Over time, as we recall these altered images, we may believe the edited version to be true, affecting how we understand our past and ourselves.

The animation follows a protagonist who edits photos of their ex-best friend, sending them to a "memory workshop" for processing. Gradually, their mind recalls only the altered memories, highlighting how digital manipulation influences personal identity and memory.

Fangtong Liu occasionally retreats into the digital realm, where online games and personal avatars offer an escape from reality. In this virtual space, joy intertwines with fleeting moments of happiness, yet time slips away like grains of sand. 

2022
During the pandemic, I often perceived the world as a virtual tapestry, spending countless hours woven into the fabric of games. Now, in 2025, as I revisit those gaming moments, they feel like echoes from a distant past. It dawns on me that what I craved then was a way to affirm my existence, to leave traces of my presence in both digital and tangible realms. If I felt lost in the complexities of the real world, at least I could mimic the habits of a character in a game, finding a semblance of direction to navigate my everyday life.

Imagine your brain being taken out, put into a VAT filled with nutrient solution and connected to a supercomputer via electrodes. This computer feeds signals to your brain to simulate all sensory experiences, including sight, hearing, touch, and so on.
By made by Alexander Wivel. - knol article, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8719730

One day, Zhuangzi dreamed he had become a butterfly, fluttering freely and joyfully, entirely unaware of being Zhuangzi. When he awoke, he was struck by the realization that he couldn’t discern whether he was Zhuangzi dreaming of being a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming of being Zhuangzi. He pondered deeply, saying, “There must be a distinction between Zhuangzi and the butterfly, but this is called the transformation of things.”

Things in the sensory world are only imitations of the "true essence" (idea), just as shadows on a cave wall imitate real objects.

How are memories stored and erased in our brains? Are they like software versions, continuously updated and replaced over time?