Shaw / Yiran Xiao

"Digital Panopticon: Inside the Matrix" is a virtual exhibition that critically examines digital privacy and surveillance in contemporary society. Through data visualization, the artist transforms her personal social media data into an immersive experience, revealing how individual information is collected, analyzed, and potentially exploited.

"NeuralLoom" is an interdisciplinary artwork that visualizes how deep learning models perceive and interpret visual information. By transforming the complex processes of a convolutional neural network into an interactive 3D experience, the project bridges the gap between machine computation and human understanding. Viewers navigate through the neural network's layers and channels, observing how the model recognizes and interprets various aspects of input images—from simple features to complex structures. "NeuralLoom" makes these abstract processes tangible, fostering reflection on the evolving relationship between technology and humanity, and encouraging dialogue about the role of artificial intelligence in society and its impact on human cognition and creativity.

This project examines the influence of prominent Seattle music festivals—including Capitol Hill Block Party, Bumbershoot, Belltown Bloom Festival, Beyond Wonderland Seattle, and Northwest Folklife—on the genre-specific circulation patterns within the Seattle Public Library's physical media collection. Acknowledging the broader trend toward digital music consumption, this study focuses on physical media (CDs, DVDs, and books) to analyze shifts in public interest across various music genres over an eight-year period (2015–2023). By investigating library checkouts, this research aims to uncover potential correlations between these events and local genre preferences, providing insight into the cultural impact of music festivals on community engagement with physical media.