SHANMU SUN 孙山木

Works

Ideal Home
理想之家

Ideal Home — installation view

Installation view

Ideal Home — detail

Detail

Ideal Home — audience Ideal Home — VR headset

Ideal Home is an extended-reality (XR) narrative project that explores how immigrant experiences and the evolving concept of home are reshaped through emerging technologies. Central to the story is a ghostly AI avatar that drifts through layered interfaces, landscapes, symbols, and code. Combining generative AI, immersive XR environments, and collaborative writing, the project constructs a fragmented, non-linear story world shaped by multiple voices. The artist invited immigrant writers to co-create a text archive based on their experiences of longing, memory, and displacement. A fine-tuned GPT-4 model then rewrote a unified script, blending distinct writing styles and transforming cultural symbols into something unexpected. By embedding the script into a game engine, the project blurs the line between oral history and generative fiction, offering an alternative mode of engagement. The AI avatar acts as a narrator and emotional guide, accompanying the player through flickering memory objects, dreamlike spaces, and cultural echoes. Ideal Home becomes a speculative space where collective memory and machine intelligence co-author a new language for belonging.

View at Ars Electronica →

VCUarts documentation →

The Graceful Site

The Graceful Site — installation view

Installation view

The Graceful Site — interior The Graceful Site — night

A collaborative 24/7 real-time Live Simulation project with Ruiqi Zhang, presented at The Wrong Biennial 2024, Black Brick Project(Brooklyn, NY), INSTINC SPACE(Singapore), Odds&Ends Film Festival(Charlottesville, VA), and others.

View project →

Say Sense is Not Everything

Say Sense is Not Everything — sensenoteverything.zip

sensenoteverything.zip

A collaborative web publication and project.

sensenoteverything.zip →

Polyphonic Shimmering

Polyphonic Shimmering — shimmering.world

shimmering.world

A collaborative web publication exploring polyphonic and shimmering forms of expression.

shimmering.world →

Teaching

OOPS! (Off-Purpose Software)

OOPS! course announcement — SFPC Fall 2025

Course announcement — SFPC, Fall 2025

A 7-week class about using serious tools unseriously. Students explore Google Workspace (Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms) and push it to the edge of breakdown — writing Apps Script as revisionist memoir, using autofill as a timing device, and finding other methods of misuse through scripting or overly literal obedience.

OOPS! — Herdimas Anggara, Weitong Sun, Rasim Bayramov

Taught by Herdimas Anggara, ShanMu Sun & Rasim Bayramov

OOPS! student work — First Day at Work

Student work: "First Day at Work"

OOPS! end-of-session showcase

End-of-session showcase, Dec 17, 2025

I never want anything to work ever again — SFPC blog

"I never want anything to work ever again" — written by Rasim Bayramov & Weitong "Shanmu" Sun, SFPC Fall 2025

Read blog post →

Course announcement →
Showcase reel →
Student work documentation →

Writing

The Endless Barrier in Reading

The Endless Barrier in Reading — Bad Sense

Read on Substack →

Speaking Across Emptiness: On Translation, Self, and Silence

Speaking Across Emptiness — sensenoteverything.zip

Read essay →

"Earth's Rotation Vertigo"

Earth's Rotation Vertigo — Polyphonic Shimmering

Read text →

Research

Lab Streaming Layer Framework Research

Published research on the Lab Streaming Layer framework, exploring real-time biosignal data in XR environments.

Read on Springer →

About

ShanMu Sun — Photo © Jiayi Liang

I am a Chinese artist and writer, currently based in the United States. I am interested in the intersection of art, literature, and technology.

My work often explores themes of identity, culture, and the human experience. I consider myself an experimental artist who explores live simulation, digital storytelling, artificial intelligence, and the methodology of programming languages.

My practice explores the complexity of emerging technology and computation as an alternative narrative container.

My work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria), Black Brick Project (NYC, US), Instinc (Singapore), ICAVCU (Richmond, VA), and others.

Faculty at VCU Arts & VCU Kinetic Imaging.

Download CV →

Contact

shanmusun17@gmail.com