What might a protein sound like as it folds? How could a constellation of microtonal harmonics reconfigure our sense of space, attention, and temporal flow? For artist and researcher Haoxuan Zhang, sound is never merely a signal awaiting reception. It is an energetic agent – one capable of restructuring living systems and the material substrates that surround them.
Operating across sonic art, visual installation, computational modelling, and interactive environments, Haoxuan constructs multisensory experiences in which audiences encounter phenomena typically foreclosed from perception: acoustic interference patterns, material resonances made visible, infinitesimal modulations in amplitude and frequency, the liminal threshold where sensation dissolves into structure. Recent projects synthesise research undertaken between Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art, investigating whether particular frequency bands and material interfaces might influence biological processes-protein assembly, particle suspension dynamics at the molecular scale.
In Something Human 1, an audio-visual work premiered within the international digital exhibition thumb2 and physically launched at Ladder Space, Aarhus, Haoxuan weaves sine tones, band-filtered noise, and processed field recordings with visual elements into a gradually unfolding sensory field. The composition develops through calculated tensions: frequencies phase-lock before drifting apart, waveforms obliterate and regenerate one another, fragments of human respiration fuse with algorithmic architectures. Audiences describe the experience as simultaneously intimate and monumental – an encounter with vibration and materiality as sculptural media, and with attention itself as perceptual apparatus.
Haoxuan’s performances and installations have addressed audiences throughout the UK and internationally. At the Royal Albert Hall’s Open Stages programme, a site-responsive sound -visual installation and live performance transformed the Elgar Room into an active resonant chamber, bridging traditional piano and acoustic instruments with frontier sound technologies to reveal the architecture’s hidden sonic properties.
Within a clinical setting, Haoxuan contributed sound and material interface work to Design Innovation in Healthcare at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, examining how multisensory design might enhance perceptual acuity and care protocols within public health infrastructures.
This research-led practice inhabits the intersection of artistic and scientific inquiry, yet studiously avoids reductive illustration but to manifest the fundamental relationships between sound, matter, and life. Rather than transcoding data into audible or visible equivalents, the works establish perceptual conditions through which audiences might apprehend how the universe organizes itself at multiple scales: the characteristic beating produced by minimally detuned sine waves mirrors protein oscillations; acoustic interference patterns echo quantum behaviors; material transformations rendered perceptible through carefully designed interfaces reveal the malleability of matter under vibrational influence. The implicit proposition is that perception is not passive reception but an active, continuously reorganised process – one fundamentally shaped by multisensory encounter and capable of accessing truths that remain perpetually unseen through conventional means.
© Haoxuan Zhang
Haoxuan represents a new generation enacting a paradigm shift in how art and science co-pilot human creation. Moving beyond the traditional divisions that have long separated artistic intuition from scientific rigor, this practice demonstrates that the two are not merely complementary but fundamentally unified, both modes of attending to and participating in the universe’s ongoing formation. The work refuses hierarchy between sensory knowledge and empirical data, between felt experience and measured phenomenon, proposing instead that genuine understanding emerges precisely where these seemingly disparate ways of knowing converge.
Haoxuan’s broader concerns encompass ecology and collective experience, realised through collaborations addressing climate consciousness, epistemic distortion, and communal modes of sensing. Exhibited at venues including the Grantham Institute Climate Research Showcase, Exhibition Road Festival, and London Design Festival, the practice maintains methodological consistency: establish lucid sensory parameters that bridge seemingly disparate domains, honour systemic complexity at every scale, and permit multiple modes of perception to uncover relationships that single-sense comprehension might miss.
In the year ahead, Haoxuan is developing a tripartite series engaging three scalar domains: the acoustic, the microscopic, and the subatomic. Each project will manifest as paired installation and performance, employing bespoke software alongside minimal transducer configurations and visual systems to generate granular, spatially distributed sensory experiences. The ambition is not sensory bombardment but refined sensitivity, an invitation to dwell within vibration, materiality, and visual resonance, and register their transformative effects.
When asked what audiences might derive from this work, Haoxuan gestures toward attention itself. “Perception operates as both action and instrument, it’s a transformation in how we understand existence itself. If we cultivate responsiveness to minute variation across sensory modalities, we may simultaneously cultivate responsiveness to one another and to the precarious patterns sustaining our shared world.”
Artist: Haoxuan Zhang
Selected presentations/exhibitions: Royal Albert Hall Open Stages; thumb2, Ladder Space, Denmark; Design Innovation in Healthcare, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust; London Design Festival (with PriestmanGoode); Grantham Institute Climate Research Showcase; Exhibition Road Festival; Somers Gallery
Affiliation: Royal College of Art–Imperial College London; Research Member, Edinburgh Futures Institute
Support:
Supported by The Blue Jet Foundation
Portfolio: www.thebluejet.com
Instagram: @haoxuan_3am
