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16. Information
Saliva Commune
Green Sun
Pattern Test (No. 1)
Chlorophyll Grid
Fluid Dynamics Study
Britannia
Stay With Your Tribe
Spent Landscape
Sun and 80 Consonents
Matadero
CUERPO Collective Body
Supernormal Vision Machine
Terra
Night Stories
Field Condition
Untitled


   Sy Di 2026

I am a Chinese Canadian artist currently based in Toronto and Vancouver. My work explores post-extractive sites, toxic substances, and forms of biopolitics mediated through fluid matter. My current research focuses on DIY mist installations and biological media, including bodily fluids such as saliva. Through these materials, I explore tensions between affective experience, social control, and utopian thinking. In my resarch, fluid matter offers a way to imagine how relationships among bodies, technologies, and possible futures might be reorganized. 

In my installation work, I often use repurposed objects, biological media, plants, electronics, environmental data, and live coding tools to assemble multimedia environments. My thinking is informed by lineages of socialist thought and by scientific and cosmo-spiritual traditions that move between myth and science, including Russian Cosmism, Eastern costomology and ritual practices.

sy.di [at] mail.utoronto.ca
09.Sun and 80 Consonents



2023



mycelium substrate, 3D printed mold, arduino sensor; coding; MDF boards; sound transducer; sand; wooden panels, emergency blanket; 

Sun and 80 Consonents is a multimedia installation composed of a living mycelium sculpture, a bio-sensing device, sound, and a plate of sand. An Arduino-based system monitors electrical activity and environmental changes within the fruiting mycelium. The collected data is converted into MIDI and processed through code written in SuperCollider, translating fluctuations within the living substrate into sound.

A speaker positioned beneath the sand plate transmits the sound as vibration, causing the sand to shift into changing cymatic patterns. As these patterns form and dissolve, they gradually distort the geometry of the sand mandala.

During the exhibition opening, mushrooms were harvested from the mycelium sculpture, accompanied by a conversation about cycles of growth and harvest, as well as the afterlife of spent mycelium substrate as biowaste and its afterlife amonst the farming community.

The work was developed with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

 
1/7    Installation view 
2/7    Installation view
3/7   Installation view
4/7    Mushroom forging event at the exhibition opening   
5/7    Mushroom forging event at the exhibition opening
6/7    Mycelium substrate in 3D printed mold
7/7    Mycelium spore gathered on the mold throughout the exhibition