I’ve been identified as one of those people that are ‘jack of all trades, master of none’. As a highly distracted individual, I’ve struggled a lot in finding focus.

Creative History

I grew up submerged in the art works of Hayao Miyazaki, Rumoki Takashi, Eiichiro Oda, Masashi Kishimoto. Basically anime was my only focus as a kid. I would spend the whole summer watching anime, reading manga. I was inspired to draw from an early stage, all my text books were filled with cartoon characters and story lines. Becoming a manga artist and story teller was my dream as a teenager.

Most of my early work got lost in chaos… but in this really old website you can find more of my illustrations.

At the time, I was also fascinated by the idea of world creating and immersive technology. I realized that things like AR, VR and interactive machines had so much more possibilities than just illustration -- now you don’t just have a piece of drawing, your can create animated virtual worlds and machines that talk to each others.

The idea of creating art with advanced technology was a game changer for me, I started branching out from just illustrations to interactive art and programming. Making physical interactive art with Arduino and exploring all sorts of sensors. You can find more of these work on this really old website.

One thing led to another, I landed in the world of game development. I realized that there are physical limitations in the world of hardware hack, which at the time I didn’t want to deal with, I wanted to create art that doesn’t obey the rule of physics, have an empty space for just imagination. I made games about Taoism, prototypes on generative cities, an ‘AR’ cooking game, a backscratching simulator, and more…

Making games were a ton of fun, and also a very hirable skill. I soon started working in the AR industry in Santa Monica LA. It was great work and the working environment were friendly and encouraging. I worked along some top talents of the industry and was learning a lot every day, making Augmented Reality tutorials.

Things are going great, but I was going through a very existential time. Living in Venice LA, having many friends and fun things to do, hiking, surfing, skating, house partying. It was almost too perfect and worry-free of a lifestyle, and that bothered me deeply for some reason. I couldn’t figure out why.

I thought learning more skills can make this feeling go away, so I got into DJing and music production, played around with generative visuals with TouchDesigner.

Making 3D art also became a casual hobby. I loved creating these psychedelic ‘new age’ spiritual renders of imaginary places.

Some Mental Struggles

These creative hobbies were able to make the existential feeling go away temporarily, but not completely.

At some point, I started hating on all these creative expressions. I felt they were very indulging, they weren’t making the world a better place, they’re worthless inventions and fulfills nothing else but my own artistic ego.

I wanted to learn more about the other side of the world, aside from working and exploring creative tech, I started to research about the reality of our society, challenges we are facing as a species, falling into internet rabbit holes about the environmental crisis, the housing crisis, collective existential crisis and much much more…

The life I lived in LA felt like an illusion, a retired heaven, almost too peaceful and perfect. I realized that the rest of the world don’t live like this, wealth inequality and inflation was skyrocketing every day, there are so much societal issues going on and merely recycling and donating to homelessness doesn’t seem enough.

I felt like I was in such a lucky position to have so much abundance, and I’m not really elevating the world around me if all I did was indulging in this abundance.

I started to doubt the use of art, I felt like creating art was not gonna save the world, art has become highly commoditized, mostly a way for the rich to store value. My passion for art was fought every day by this thought that art is useless.

I thought of going to school for environmental studies, maybe join a research lab on the issue of recycling, or start an internship at an environmental non-profit. At the same time I was intimidated to ‘give up’ all my years of training in the field of interactive art, and start from ground zero again.

Anyways, this mental struggles went on for a while, I stopped creating and was just reading about the environment, existentialism, ways to ‘solve’ worlds’ problems and such.

First Eco Village Visit

I lived on the Big Island of Hawaii for a few months, during which I visited an eco village called Cinderland. It was what you would call a complete ‘hippie’ heaven. People grew fruits and farmed bees for a living. Most people had no job or any social responsibilities.

I was amazed to see how people lived in a carefree and ‘eco-friendly’ way. I know this lifestyle probably isn’t sustainable or acceptable in a lot of places, but I had the idea that this can be an inspiration for many of us.

I left my job a few months after, and embarked on a journey to explore eco villages and ‘alternative living’. I believe people whose stories aren’t up on the internet might have a lot to teach us, and indeed I was able to find so much inspiration from the places I visited, and people I met.

Through my travels I also slowly realized that no single person can uplift suffering of the entire world. Essentially everybody has their own struggles to go through, and everyone was meant to be their own saviors. That doesn’t mean that we should stop caring about the world, but instead we should recognize our limitations and our strength.

I started to realize that I might not be the best researcher or writer, and it wouldn’t be effective for me to dedicate my life into doing things I’m not good at or things I don’t love, and I wouldn’t create much impact if I wasn’t living authentically.

The Art of Ikigai

As I was coming close to a full circle over my love and hate towards my creative expression, I stumbled upon the idea of Ikigai.

I have had many hobbies, many directions in life, believed in many theories and contradicting philosophies, and I started to realize that all of these are valuable insights that can be braided into my creative expression. I realized that I’m not gonna be the most impactful if I don’t pursuit my authentic passion to do creative work, and art can be used as a medium to spread a message, to uplift, heal and inspire the world around us.

After much back and forth, debate and self-hatred, I finally come to full circle towards my feelings for art, and felt ready, once again, to devote myself into what I enjoy doing the most.

I still believe that the art industry (or any other) has been highly capitalized and commoditized, that popular art are filled with people creating shinny objects for attentions, from overpriced JPEG to galleries of infinite snobbiness and abstractions --- but it doesn’t mean art can’t be honest and impactful.

If we combine art with ideals to make the world a better place, art can be immensely powerful. Art is also a day-to-day practice, the more you do it, the more cohesive your artistic language would be.

Agartha Village

This article marks the beginning of a 4 week residency hosted by Forefront, a creative collective in the web3 space. HUGE shoutout to Forefront for encouraging me to explore my creativity, and giving me the time and freedom to explore as much as I can.

Agartha was launched as a project to promote eco village and solarprunk living to the general public, which is something I care deeply and passionately about.

For the past months, Agartha has been a platform for people interested in the same subject to come together, share resources and exchange ideas. We’ve published our first article among many other planned, about the effectiveness of eco villages as an alternative living solution.

Some ethos of Agartha are described in this graph.

If you’re interested in meeting more like-minded people to talk about solarpunk lifestyles, come !join our community here!

I’ve decided to combine my knowledge in interactive and digital art creation with this mission to build regenerative eco villages into one project: Creating concept art for eco villages to fund building of the physical Agartha eco village.

I’ve been extremely excited to work on this, and will spend the next 4 weeks working intensely on this project.

Here is a concept board I’ve been putting together for the Agartha Village.

And here is the moodboard for Agartha. (inspired by religious temples and culturally diverse architectural designs)

The Agartha Village is something I strive to create as part of my life’s mission. It will be a place to celebrate culture and diversity, science and technology, live in harmony with nature and each other, and bring prosperity and inspirations to the world around us. 💛

Now building a village is not an easy task, many aspects need to be considered, land, governance, legal structure, revenue model… creating concept art and mission statement is only the first steps among many to follow.

To Be Continued…

Thank you all for reading through this journal about my creative expression. Many details aren’t included here, such as the extensive research about eco village and eco living, my journey through hippie gatherings, reading upon different school of philosophies from CG Jung to Taoism, and how they influenced my creative expressions and perspectives on life.