Leaving Feeds Living
Physiological data-cultivated kombucha pellicle
3D printing
Tea
Screen
Electronic
Video
2026
In emotional geography, affect refers to feelings that are not clearly articulated. Unlike emotion, which is named and conscious, affect is closer to bodily reactions—existing before language, before sadness or joy, wandering across skin and temperature. Affect has no specific form, yet it alters how people perceive space. It shifts the sense of place from an abstract psychological identity to a concrete bodily experience.
Tian’s hometown is the birthplace of the world’s tea culture and the starting point of the Ancient Tea Horse Road. The experience of relocation made her aware of this bodily sensation. Using Tibetan tea from her hometown as the raw material to cultivate SCOBY, she regards the body as an encounter. She transforms the daily physiological data of living in a foreign land into the conditions for cultivating SCOBY, using a bio-diary to document subtle sensations that gradually grow into a unique form of identification. The moving screen, bearing the tea bricks, employs the metaphor of the porters (beifu) who manually transported tea along the Ancient Tea Horse Road. It plays flowing, slow, breath-like digital imagery, crafted from daily observations made during the SCOBY cultivation process. This brings to life the imagined act of walking along the road—where the starting point signifies "home," yet the journey is one of ceaseless departure. The work traces the movement of affect between body and matter, flowing across different times and places, exploring how affect allows people to reunderstand belonging and the meaning of the body in everyday life, enhancing perception of life amid environmental change.
Affect 在情感地理中關注那些沒有被清晰說出來的感受，不同於emotion被命名、被意識的情緒，affect更靠近身體的反應，在語言之前、在傷心難過、開心興奮之前，在皮膚與溫度遊走。Affect沒有具體形態，但改變人對空間的感知。Affect讓地方感（sense of place)從抽象的心理認同轉向具體的身體體驗。
天的家鄉是世界茶文化發源地，亦是茶馬古道的起點，環境的遷移讓她注意到這種身體體驗。她以家鄉的藏茶作為培養SCOBY的原材料，並將身體視為一個相遇的場域（encounter），將自己身處異鄉每日的生理數據轉化為培養SCOBY的條件，以生物日記記錄那些細微的感受，逐漸生長成一張獨特的身分證明。 載有茶磚移動的屏幕以茶馬古道上人力運送茶葉的背夫作為隱喻，播放著在培養scoby過程中每日的紀錄影像製作成流動地、緩慢地如呼吸般的數字影像，賦予生命的想像行走在路上，起點是家的意味，而它一直在遠行。 作品追蹤Affect在身體與物質之間的穿行，在不同時間地點流動，探討Affect如何在日常生活裡讓人重新理解歸屬感與身體的意義，在環境變遷中增強對生活的感知力。
@ SATA (Society Art Technology Asia)