Li Yi-Fan (born 1989, Taipei, Taiwan; lives in Taipei, Taiwan, and Amsterdam, Netherlands) creates works that integrate game engines and real-time rendering technologies, allowing him to improvise intricate 3-D animations with performative immediacy. Since 2019, Li has been developing his own image-making tools using real-time game engines and dynamic modeling systems. His practice redefines the sensory interface of animation and moving images, exploring the relationship between technological mediation and narrative construction. What Is Your Favorite Primitive (2023) takes the form of a satirical keynote tech presentation, in which a protagonist grapples with the ethical and societal questions embedded in software tools designed for image production. Through this work, Li reflects on how images reshape modes of communication and how emojis might transmit emotional meanings that surpass individual perception. At its core, the piece speculates on whether image technologies might one day project an as-yet-unrealized totality—constructing a new politics of life and death.
