2025
Digital Heritage| Sensory Ethnography | Installation Art | LLM | Gender Studies | Data Materialization and Visualization
This project explores how artificial intelligence and digital media can preserve and reinterpret Nüshu, the secret script created by women in Jiangyong, China. Emerging in a historical context where women were forbidden to read or write, Nüshu became a unique symbolic system through which women recorded emotions, memories, and social bonds. Written on fans, cloth, and embroidered objects, the script carried voices that were otherwise excluded from official history.
By combining computational linguistics, phonetic reconstruction, and visual digitization, this project rebuilds Nüshu as a digital heritage system. Through data analysis, sound reconstruction, and interactive visualization, we seek not only to archive the script but also to reanimate the sensory experiences embedded within it. In doing so, the project reflects on the human ability to transform lived experience into symbolic language, and how digital technologies can extend that symbolic resilience into the future.
MATERIALS
PHYSICAL
DIGITAL
DATA
SYSTEMS
SOFTWARE
HARDWARE
FABRICATION
Yarn, Embroidery, Conductive Wires, Sewing
Generative
Caligraphy Scan, Unicode
Processing, TouchDesigner, Python, HTML, Blender
Arduino Uno
Sewing Machine, Embroder Machine
DESIGN AND PRODUCTION PROCESS
Data Visualization
Bibliography
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Li, Q. (2013). Echoes from the fans: Emotional memory and the Nüshu epistolary tradition. Cultural Relics Press.
Lin, J., & Wang, H. (2020). Engaging youth in intangible cultural heritage through social media. Chinese Journal of Communication, 13(4), 421–437.
Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China. (2006). First batch of national intangible cultural heritage list. http://www.ihchina.cn
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Unicode Consortium. (2021). Nüshu characters in Unicode 10.0. https://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1B170.pdf
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Wang, X. (2010). Nüshu as resistance: Gendered discourse in imperial China. Modern China, 36(3), 314–343.
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Zhao, L. (2009). Nüshu: The Chinese women’s script. Tsinghua University Press.
Zhao, L., & Xu, Y. (2017). Nüshu standard calligraphy guide. Tsinghua University Press.