NAMES IN SHADOWS
AN IMMERSIVE ART INSTALLATION
Authors: Melinda Sipos ¹, Liuhuaying Yang ²
Affiliations: 1 Doctoral School, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design 2 Complexity Science Hub Vienna
KEYWORD
#transliteration
#identity
#ambiguity
#algorithmic bias
#cross-cultural systems
ABSTRACT
Names in Shadow is part of Lost in Transliteration [1], exploring how Chinese names are transliterated and misread by Western-centric systems such as Pinyin. Combining craftsmanship and new media, the installation makes visible the emotional residue of algorithmic misreading; it transforms systematic frustration into embodied eerie experience. In a half-lit space, visitors encounter names as lanterns, moving between clarity and uncertainty. Initially, only pinyin is visible; as they approach, light reveals multiple Chinese characters sharing the same pinyin. Shadows and lantern sizes visualize ambiguity.
CREATIVE PROCESS
The work sits at the edge of comfort and discomfort. Light and shadow are symbolic tools that reflect the tension of misread identity. This led us to the concept of creating lamp-like objects, visually and materially referencing Chinese lanterns. The installation draws on a dataset of 81,177 Chinese scholar names [2, 3] from which we selected names exemplifying different forms of ambiguity.
IMPLICATIONS & NEXT STEPS
Two objects were prototyped and exhibited at the Palais Rothschild
during the Visualizing Complexity Science Workshop last summer.
Future plans include developing the work into a public installation
situated within an urban or museum context, bringing the issue into
broader public awareness and inviting wider audiences to directly
confront the questions and biases the installation raises.
References
1. Lost in Transliteration: Chinese Names to the West. vis.csh.ac.at/chinesenames/.
2. She, M., Yang L., Jaramillo, A.M., Espín-Noboa, L. (2026). Bridging the Language Gap in Scholarly Data I: Enhancing Author Disambiguation
Algorithms for Chinese Names. arXiv:2604.03776.
3. Beijing Normal University. Hanzi Quanxi (汉字全息资源应用系统). Retrieved from https://qxk.bnu.edu.cn/.