繁 Yuan Ze University students won both the Gold and Bronze Awards at the 2025 Taoyuan Youth Design Exhibition and International Design Forum, organized by the Taoyuan City Government and held on November 1 at the Taoyuan Convention and Exhibition Center. This year’s event, themed “Genesis Singularity: From Da Vinci to Autonomous AI,” combined AI computation, interactive art, and sustainable craftsmanship, showcasing a dialogue between technology and the humanities. Yuan Ze students delivered outstanding performances, earning the Gold and Bronze Awards with their works “In Stillness, I Observe” and “A Walk Down Memory Lane,” demonstrating the university’s strong foundation in AI art and creative design.
The exhibition featured 103 exceptional works by young talents from 11 high schools, vocational schools, and universities across Taoyuan. It was divided into five major themed sections — Mechanism, AI Computational Power, Language, AI Design Ability, Empathy, Restorative Design, Culture and Collaborative Craftsmanship, and Future and Perceptive Cities. The event also invited international experts, designers, and teams from the Youth Affairs Bureau’s Design Bank program to co-curate, highlighting the diverse achievements of Taoyuan’s youth in interdisciplinary innovation and design practice.
In the Design Curation Competition awards, Chih-Lin Lo, a student from Yuan Ze University’s Department of Art and Design, won the Gold Award for her work “In Stillness, I Observe.” Meanwhile, students Pei-Yu Shih and Yu-Chen Li received the Bronze Award for their collaborative work “A Walk Down Memory Lane,” which became one of the focal points of the exhibition.
Chih-Lin Lo explained that her work took a year to conceptualize and produce, exploring the theme of “seeing and being seen” in contemporary human-AI interactions. Using real-time image perception systems and AI facial analysis technology, she translated the viewer’s expressions, emotions, gender, and age into dynamically generated colors, shapes, and sounds, presenting AI’s “first impression” of each observer. The artwork not only displayed the aesthetic beauty of computational processes but also evoked deep reflection on digital subjectivity and emotional perception.
Through the interactive process, the piece allowed viewers to confront the AI’s “gaze” and reflect on their own emotional and behavioral changes when being observed. “In Stillness, I Observe” used visuals, sound, and interaction as media to reveal how technology reshapes human self-awareness and understanding of humanity, challenging conventional ideas of “reality” and “perception.”
The Department of Art and Design at Yuan Ze University stated that the students’ success at the exhibition demonstrated the outcomes of the university’s educational philosophy of integrating Technology × Art × Humanities. The department continued to promote cross-disciplinary creation, encouraging students to combine AI technology, interactive media, and sustainable design thinking to cultivate a new generation of designers with international perspectives and innovative capabilities.
