Hidden Incident of Pet Food

The data video work Hidden Incident of Pet Food discusses the life-threatening pet food problems in a human-focused world. For the first time, this work links pet food research with contemporary art, which incorporates new technologies such as AI and data visualization. We are researching a series of global life issues, from taurine deficiency in the 1970s, to the use of melamine to boost protein content in 2007-2008 and the use of animal products containing the euthanasia drug Pentobarbital in 2017. These various events pull together incidents involving pet food to form a continuing narrative of unintentional harm to humans, including harm caused in striving for commercial profit, and secondary poisoning to multiple species. We blend real incidents and pets with other visual components in order to visually enhance the experience for the audience. This work explores the relationship between people and pets in so far as they are controlled by pet capitalism.

Ziwei Wu, Xiaofu Jin, Yifang Wang, Xian Xu

Ziwei Wu(吴子薇) is a media artist and researcher who was born in Shenzhen in 1996. She is a PhD student in Computational Media and Arts(CMA) at HKUST. Her artworks are mainly based on biology, science, and their influence on society, using a range of media. She is a Lumen prize and Batsford prize winner. Her research was published in the SIGGRAPH art program and EVA London. Her work has been exhibited and presented internationally, including at CYFEST in Russia, Norwegian BioArt Arena (NOBA), Watermans Gallery and Cello Factory in London, NeurIPS AI Art Gallery, ArtMachine2 in Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre in Hong Kong, Times Art Museum in Beijing and Himalayas museum in Shanghai.

Born in China in 1995, Xiaofu Jin (金晓芙) completed a Masters of Artificial Intelligence Science and Technology in 2020, and went on to study as a PhD student in the same year before transferring to the programme of Computation Media and Arts at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) in 2022. Xiaofu has published papers on computer vision techniques and accessibility research involving human-computer interactive design. This is her first work as an artist. She seeks to apply AI techniques into the art field to further improve the performance of the artworks and to contribute to our understanding of social issues.

Yifang Wang (王懿芳) is currently a fourth-year PhD candidate in HKUST VisLab, at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), under the supervision of Professor Huamin Qu. Previously, she obtained her BEng degree from Zhejiang University, majoring in Software Engineering in 2018. Her research interests include visual analytics of computational social science, and digital humanities. She also creates works in data storytelling, data art, and immersive visual analytics.

Xian Xu (徐娴) is a writer and researcher in film and computational media. She received a bachelor's degree in in Directing and a Master's degree in Drama and Film Studies from the Central Academy of Drama. Currently, she is a PhD student in Computational Media and Arts and VisLab in HKUST. She is a five-time national scholarship winner and Beijing’s outstanding graduate student winner. She participated in the TV play Our Glamorous Time as a scriptwriter in 2017 and has published her a monograph I Like To be Independent. Her research interests and artworks mainly focus on the interdisciplinary study of data storytelling, transmedia storytelling, and cinematic arts. Her works were published in ACM CHI and IEEE VIS.

Jin Tian

Xian Xu