Shanshui in Motion
Description
Shanshui in Motion is an interactive installation by Studio Tim Fu that re-examines traditional Chinese landscape painting as an immersive, responsive experience. As visitors pass a projected canvas, their silhouettes are captured in real time and transformed into living shanshui scenes. Mountains, rivers, and city fragments are blended as classical aesthetics with urban memories of Hong Kong and Shenzhen.
The AI is trained on a custom dataset combining traditional ink paintings from Tim Fu’s personal Shanshui sketches and other sources with photographs from cities across the Greater Bay Area. Each gesture becomes a brushstroke, generating landscapes that shift with presence and movement.
Through the use of a real-time AI-diffusion model with reactive motion-tracking , the work merges public participation with art, performance, and interface. Part of STF Labs’ AI-driven experiences, Shanshui in Motion brings heritage into dialogue with public, real-time spatial expression.
Biography
Studio Tim Fu is a London-based architectural design practice working at the convergence of AI, computation, and spatial storytelling. Founded by Tim Fu, formerly of Zaha Hadid Architects, the studio is known for merging emerging technologies with architectural expression. Their work spans from masterplanning and architectural design, to arts and installations.
This installation is led by STF Labs, the studio’s research and innovation arm focused on generative systems and real-time technologies. The project is developed by lead researcher Marco Alfaro and researcher Abdelaziz Awad, who built the AI-driven motion and diffusion pipeline behind the interactive system.
Artistic direction is provided by Tim Fu, Saina Abdollahzadeh, and Rada Daleva, shaping the studio’s creative vision, narrative and spatial expertise.
Together, the team brings a multidisciplinary perspective combining art, code, and form, reimagining how cities and people can co-author space in real time.
Materials
Interactive projection
Organisation
Studio Tim Fu