""Goodbye Icarus"" is a multimedia work comprising three parts: art book design, graphic novel, and immersive motion graphic. The work incorporates the mythological backgrounds and characters of Jingwei Filling the Sea（精卫填海） and Icarus's Wings. It explores the choices and actions people make when faced with futile, impossible, and unshakeable situations.

The graphic novel ""Goodbye Icarus"" blends mythology, personal narrative, and design language to highlight environmental consciousness. At its core, the project reimagines the ancient tales of Jingwei and Icarus, setting their struggles against the backdrop of contemporary human dilemmas. Through the interplay between the art book and a year-long coastal residency documentation, the project invites viewers into a conversation between the past and present, myth and reality.

A year of coastal life in Rhode Island has provided me with endless inspiration in terms of design language. I've ventured into blending dynamic visuals from TouchDesigner with illustration. My narrative is based on seaside scenery and mythology metaphorical elements, making image programming to capture the essence of waves a focal point and central experiment of my work."

After crafting a dynamic design visual language, I use Risograph printing to achieve a granularity as precise as digital programming, integrating book design with content to form a cohesive product. This exploration seeks to probe the boundaries where design, motion visuals, and illustrative language converge.

This section of the work involves creating an art book using illustrations and the motion graphic software TouchDesigner, based on my year-long observations and experiences along the Newport coast. TouchDesigner is utilized for dynamic visual arrangement, to collect, analyze, encode, and generate digital waves based on data.

For the book's design and binding, I used materials like metallic silver paper, transparent acrylic, and metal steel nails. The book is divided into two sections: an introduction to the background and the main story. In terms of printing, the content combines programming language with illustration, resulting in a texture that showcases the unique coded patterns of digital media. I opted for Risograph printing, known for its strong textures and dot characteristics, to produce the book. Additionally, the hot stamping silver process added a unique glossy texture, helping readers engage more deeply with the illustration content. "

The mirrored paper design on the final page allows the cliff from the content of the work to appear alongside the reader's face. By leveraging the material's properties to achieve interactive design, the reading experience immerses the reader into the work's environment, creating a unique reading experience.

It is a conversation about survival, inspired by two mythological figures associated with the sea - Jingwei from Chinese mythology, who attempted to fill the sea, and Icarus from Greek mythology, fell into the sea.

In the myth, both of them symbolize defiance against tyranny, but in my work, I want to talk about the consequent exhaustion and existential doubt following their acts, because this is the same question of our modern human beings, especially after the epidemic.

Jingwei silently gazes at the sandcastle swept away by the wind.

Icarus gazes into the distance.

“The conqueror is the warrior who relinquishes the eternal vows.

Aware of his impending demise, he yearns to partake in and shape the history of humankind.

He opts for action over stillness, for he understands that nothing endures, and victory is only but a fleeting chapter.”

I utilized the digital programming software Touch Designer to collect and arrange visuals of waves, eventually transforming them into dynamic images. For the first time, illustration was combined with tech art, yielding expressiveness. The images generated by coding carried the distinct texture of digital language, opening up possibilities for my printing experiments.

I defined the concept of waves. In my story, the waves reflect the characters' states of mind. In the first wave scene, since the future is uncertain, I chose to combine Glitch/Particle effects with multi-directional, multi-angled dynamics. Simultaneously, with the scene of falling waves, I hope to create a resonance yet distinction between the characters and environment.