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Above: Sian Fan and her work.  Conduit is a digital performance incorporating motion capture with live movement, featuring the artist as the solo performer. It uses an Xbox Kinect sensor mounted directly above the lying performer to capture and translate her movements onto a virtual avatar.ARTSTHREAD:How did you get into your creative field - tell us about your background? Sian Fan: I’ve always been interested in drawing and being creative, but my background in terms of training is actually in performance art. For my BA I studied Performance and Visual Art - Dance at the University of Brighton, where I got interested in combining digital projection with the body. I started working with video to replicate the body, creating non-physical performers. After graduating this interest developed into digital media, using 3D animation, photogrammetry and game design to create avatars and objects that I could augment and interrupt reality with. I discovered VR and AR and got really interested in how digital media affects our human experience. Whilst studying at Central Saint Martins I started experimenting with the Xbox Kinect, hacking it to create glitchy motion capture. It was this co-dependant tension between human vs digital that inspired my final work, ‘Conduit’. ARTSTHREAD:What motivates you creatively? Sian Fan: Concept is really important to my creative practice. Most of the time when I’m creating, I’m trying to process complex, messy and entangled ideas, exploring the interconnections and the acrimony between things. For me, creating is just an extension of thinking, it’s how I reflect and understand things, but in an unrestricted and multi-faceted way. My own curiosity keeps me inspired, there’s always more questions to ask, more ideas to explore. ARTSTHREAD: What does winning this award mean to you? Sian Fan: Winning this award would is a really great moment in what has been a very strange year. It's an empowering feeling of achievement, particularly where much of the final elements of my course have been kind of anticlimactic! ARTSTHREAD: What’s next? Sian Fan: I’m moving into a studio at the Sarabande Foundation, which I think will be a really exciting and nurturing environment for my practice. I’m also working on two big commissions, one with Essex Cultural Diversity Projects and Essex County Council to create a digital work exploring local waterways and another with Site Gallery creating motion capture performances within gaming environments. Meet all the judges' winners in the Fine Art, Photography, Craft category & in all other categories of the i-D x ARTSTHREAD Global Design Graduate Show. 
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Above: Sian Fan and her work.
Meet Sian Fan, the winner of the Digital Arts category judges vote in the i-D and ARTSTHREAD Global Design Graduate Show 2020!
See Sian Fan's winning project Conduit. Sian is a Fine Art MA graduate from Central Saint Martins UAL.
Read Sian Fan's story on i-D
Conduit is a digital performance incorporating motion capture with live movement, featuring the artist as the solo performer. It uses an Xbox Kinect sensor mounted directly above the lying performer to capture and translate her movements onto a virtual avatar.ARTSTHREAD:How did you get into your creative field - tell us about your background?
Sian Fan: I’ve always been interested in drawing and being creative, but my background in terms of training is actually in performance art. For my BA I studied Performance and Visual Art - Dance at the University of Brighton, where I got interested in combining digital projection with the body. I started working with video to replicate the body, creating non-physical performers. After graduating this interest developed into digital media, using 3D animation, photogrammetry and game design to create avatars and objects that I could augment and interrupt reality with. I discovered VR and AR and got really interested in how digital media affects our human experience. Whilst studying at Central Saint Martins I started experimenting with the Xbox Kinect, hacking it to create glitchy motion capture. It was this co-dependant tension between human vs digital that inspired my final work, ‘Conduit’.
ARTSTHREAD:What motivates you creatively?
Sian Fan: Concept is really important to my creative practice. Most of the time when I’m creating, I’m trying to process complex, messy and entangled ideas, exploring the interconnections and the acrimony between things. For me, creating is just an extension of thinking, it’s how I reflect and understand things, but in an unrestricted and multi-faceted way. My own curiosity keeps me inspired, there’s always more questions to ask, more ideas to explore.
ARTSTHREAD: What does winning this award mean to you?
Sian Fan: Winning this award would is a really great moment in what has been a very strange year. It's an empowering feeling of achievement, particularly where much of the final elements of my course have been kind of anticlimactic!
ARTSTHREAD: What’s next?
Sian Fan: I’m moving into a studio at the Sarabande Foundation, which I think will be a really exciting and nurturing environment for my practice. I’m also working on two big commissions, one with Essex Cultural Diversity Projects and Essex County Council to create a digital work exploring local waterways and another with Site Gallery creating motion capture performances within gaming environments.
Meet all the judges' winners in the Fine Art, Photography, Craft category & in all other categories of the i-D x ARTSTHREAD Global Design Graduate Show.