Lin Ching-Yao: From Tai Chi Cloud Hands to Algorithms, Answering with the Perceptible but Invisible

Lin Ching-Yao: From Tai Chi Cloud Hands to Algorithms, Answering with the Perceptible but Invisible

30-second overview: Lin Ching-Yao (Jinya Lin), born in Kaohsiung, holds a bachelor's in music composition and a master's in technology arts from Taipei National University of the Arts, a doctorate in computer science and information engineering from National Taiwan University, and a postdoctoral fellowship at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris (ENSBA). He has taught at National Tsing Hua University and Tainan National University of the Arts; in 2019 became director of the C-LAB Taiwan Sound Lab; and currently holds a project assistant professorship in the Innovation and Leadership bachelor's program at NTU's D-School. In 2022, his generative art work Metaphysics was released on Art Blocks (200 editions), and Mythologic was exhibited for live minting at Art Basel Hong Kong; that same year he participated in FAB DAO's Centennial Mountains Project, responsible for the Mirage (秘境) series. He has won Hong Kong's best stage design at the Dance Awards for stage design, and first prize in the choreography competition at the McCallum Theatre International Dance Festival in the United States. He said Taiwan's sound research was "chronically absent" — then went and built an institution to fill the gap himself. His creative philosophy has always been just one sentence: many things in the world are perceptible but not visible.

In November 2019, the C-LAB Taiwan Sound Lab officially opened in Taipei.¹ The space is fitted with a 49.4-channel speaker array and 75 seats — Taiwan's first sound research and performance venue meeting international standards. Its builder was Lin Ching-Yao.

When he was interviewed by the magazine Artist at the time, he said something that in retrospect reads like a confession covering his entire career:

"Sound, as an equally indispensable mode of perception and experience, finds the research and interdisciplinary integration of sound in Taiwan at the cultural and artistic level chronically absent."²

This was not a vague cultural observation. It is words spoken by someone who personally witnessed that absence and chose to fill it in the role of an administrator.

Starting from Music Composition

Lin Ching-Yao was born in Kaohsiung.³ He completed two degrees at Taipei National University of the Arts — a major in music composition, then a graduate degree in technology arts — before earning a doctorate in computer science and information engineering at National Taiwan University.

This trajectory is itself somewhat unusual. Composition is training in the humanities and arts; computer science is training in engineering. Most people choose one; Lin Ching-Yao chose both.

After his doctorate he went to Paris. The digital center of the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris (ENSBA) and the Intel-NTU Creative Center at National Taiwan University both hold records of his postdoctoral work.³ Paris gave him more than technical resources — it gave him the perspective to re-examine Eastern philosophy within a framework of Western avant-garde art.

Two Awards, Two Identities

Back in Taiwan, Lin Ching-Yao taught successively in the Department of Art and Design at National Tsing Hua University and the Department of Applied Music at Tainan National University of the Arts. His creative work developed along the thread of "music, computer vision, and theater interwoven" — never settling within any single category.

In 2012, he created the multimedia design for Hong Kong Dance Company's Double Swallow (雙燕) — using Wu Guanzhong's paintings as the basis for digital imagery synchronized with dance. It won the Hong Kong Dance Award for Best Stage Design.⁴ This was a milestone for a musician crossing into visual theater.

In 2016, his Time Cabinet (時空抽屜) won first prize at the McCallum Theatre International Dance Festival's choreography competition.⁵ America, theater, choreography — not one of those labels describes his original training domain.

He wrote in a 2012 artist statement during a residency at Treasure Hill Artist Village:

"I enjoy using music and computer vision as creative tools, combining them with theater or dance; I have always been thinking about how to create an interactive image theater that carries the inheritance of Eastern culture."³

This is not a strategy. It is a character trait.

Diagnose, Then Build

In 2019, Lin Ching-Yao took the position of director of the C-LAB Taiwan Sound Lab.¹ C-LAB had signed an agreement with France's IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) the year before (2018) to collaboratively build this lab. In November 2019, at the Diversonics opening music festival, Lin Ching-Yao stood as project leader at the center of that 49.4-channel space.

He was not there just to produce programming. He understood the position as an institution-building mission: Taiwan needed an infrastructure capable of conducting sound research and attracting international collaboration — now it existed, and he had to make it work.

This pattern of "diagnose the problem, then fill it as an administrator" appeared again at his other institutional role — NTU's D-School.

Tai Chi Cloud Hands Enter Algorithms

Between 2021 and 2022, Taiwan's generative art world was met with an NFT wave. Lin Ching-Yao did not wait passively; he walked into fxhash and Art Blocks carrying the ear of a composer and the eye of a theater designer.

In April 2022, he released Requiem: Cloud on fxhash⁶ — written in p5.js, with 103 color combinations, 3 frame types, 4 fragment structures, and 2 coloring schemes. It was the first work in his Cloud series. That same year, Mythologic (神話), inspired by the Classic of Mountains and Seas (山海經), was exhibited for live minting at an Art Basel Hong Kong concurrent event — audiences could mint mountain-and-sea spirits and dragon-pattern generative images in real time using Tezos.⁶ Traditional text, algorithmic aesthetics, and Web3 provenance all happened simultaneously at one of the world's top art fairs.

On December 7 of that year, his Metaphysics was released on Art Blocks — 200 editions.⁷

The artist statement for that work was a single sentence:

"Many things in the world are perceptible but not visible. Some things we can only feel, but not understand."

The inspiration was Tai Chi cloud hands (雲手). He tried to use algorithms to simulate an organic world with "qi" flowing through it — not using Tai Chi as decoration, but writing the structure of Tai Chi (continuous, flowing, cyclical) directly into the generative parameters.

There is a paradox here that he may not have made explicit: an artist whose creative philosophy says "perceptible but not visible" chose NFT — whose core blockchain mechanism makes digital objects definitively visible, verifiable, and ownable — as his artistic medium.

Invisible, becoming confirmable. This is not a contradiction. It is his answer.

The Centennial Mountains, Mirage (秘境)

In 2022, FAB DAO launched the Centennial Mountains Project (百岳計畫, Project %), with six Taiwanese generative artists each responsible for one series — 10,101 NFTs released on the Tezos blockchain. The series Lin Ching-Yao handled was called Mirage (秘境)⁸ — hidden mountain landscapes that only reveal themselves at a certain angle, in a certain light.

This theme is not an accidental choice within his overall creative trajectory.

Now at NTU

After his term at the C-LAB Sound Lab, Lin Ching-Yao moved to NTU's D-School (College of Innovation and Leadership), where he holds a project assistant professorship in the Innovation and Leadership bachelor's program.⁸ From Tainan National University of the Arts to Tsing Hua to C-LAB to NTU, he has brought the same question into every institution: how to make the intersection of technology and art a place where someone cultivates things over the long term — rather than a place where a few people briefly meet and then go their separate ways.

He is still asking today what he wrote in a 2014 residency statement at Treasure Hill:

"We always choose only what we want to see, yet ignore what exists but is invisible."³

Further Reading

• FAB DAO and the Centennial Mountains Project — The six-artist lineup of the Centennial Mountains Project and its public-interest NFT structure
• Aluan Wang — Fellow Centennial Mountains Project artist; the first Taiwanese artist to appear on Art Blocks
• Wang Lien-cheng (Shrimp Dad) — Centennial Mountains Project's Civilization series; Luminos Award winner
• Taiwan New Media Art — The historical context of generative art in Taiwan's new media art
• Chi Po-Hao — A sound artist also in the C-LAB Sound Lab ecosystem; co-exhibitor at 2025 DIVERSONICS

References