Label: Live in the Neither Utopia nor Dystopia World

Rapid technological change and the high-pressure pace of capitalist society push people to swing between chasing success and “lying flat”, creating an ambiguous zone between utopia and dystopia: two sides of the same social reality.

Visitors converse with labelled paper cranes. The colours they choose trace their own emotional path through the space, as if every earlier visitor’s feelings remain there, linking newcomers across time and experience.

By connecting events, labels and memories of place, visitors become residents of this mixed-reality society rather than mere participants. We hope they reconsider their social position and the conflicts between their roles, and find a balance between imagined ideals and real disillusionment.

In extreme and unbalanced environments, individuals get lost in the tension between self and collective, overwhelmed by external order. We believe finding balance within a changing life is a lifelong task for everyone. The work builds a new space where the virtual and the real overlap, resetting the usual measures of value and offering a place to re-examine the outer world and one’s inner state.

Mixed reality builds two extreme worlds, a utopia and a dystopia. Visitors touch colourful paper cranes to reveal hidden fortune verses; natural language sentiment analysis generates text matching each emotion, and the sequence of emotions becomes a digital postcard visitors can keep.

Concept: shaped the core idea, theme and narrative direction.

Art: modelled the main visual elements in Blender, including buildings, paper cranes and props, keeping the style consistent.

AI imagery: generated images with Midjourney for the postcards and some textures.