Artist & Researcher
Atlanta, GA
Mass Return
2026–ongoing
weighs nothing.
Mass Return asks what is left of matter once its meaning is gone.
The installation is built from four balance scales. Each holds two states of the same material in equilibrium: a raw substance pulled from the earth, and an anonymous 3D-printed fragment of a spacecraft component made from it. Bauxite balances an aluminum structural shard. Carbon fiber tow balances a composite fairing piece. Titanium sponge balances a thruster nozzle. Quartz sand balances an optical lens housing. Between the two sides lies extraction, refinement, assembly, launch, service, decay. On the scale, all of it registers as zero.
Beneath each pivot, a small 3D printed number gives the total energy consumed across that journey, in joules — large but printed small, so viewers must lean in to read it. The balance measures what is conserved. The projection measures what is not. Matter returns. Meaning does not.
At the end of the room sits a real iron meteorite — no counterweight, no pivot, no projection. It is the only piece of matter present that arrived from space without carrying any human ambition. A meteorite has never lost meaning, because none was ever given. Only what has been given meaning can fall out of it.
Currently in fabrication and under submission.
The installation is built from four balance scales. Each holds two states of the same material in equilibrium: a raw substance pulled from the earth, and an anonymous 3D-printed fragment of a spacecraft component made from it. Bauxite balances an aluminum structural shard. Carbon fiber tow balances a composite fairing piece. Titanium sponge balances a thruster nozzle. Quartz sand balances an optical lens housing. Between the two sides lies extraction, refinement, assembly, launch, service, decay. On the scale, all of it registers as zero.
Beneath each pivot, a small 3D printed number gives the total energy consumed across that journey, in joules — large but printed small, so viewers must lean in to read it. The balance measures what is conserved. The projection measures what is not. Matter returns. Meaning does not.
At the end of the room sits a real iron meteorite — no counterweight, no pivot, no projection. It is the only piece of matter present that arrived from space without carrying any human ambition. A meteorite has never lost meaning, because none was ever given. Only what has been given meaning can fall out of it.
Currently in fabrication and under submission.
How to Die in Orbit
2026–ongoing
They suspend.
How to Die in Orbit asks what it means for a built thing to know how to end.
The project is built from 3D-printed cuboctahedral modules that lock together through friction-based connectors and come apart through vibration. A single motor, no larger than the one inside a phone, sends mechanical waves through the assembled structure. When the vibration exceeds a threshold encoded in the connector's geometry, the joint releases — the modules repel each other and separate. No electronics, no sensors, no signal processing. The structure decides where and when to break based on its shape alone.
Different connectors can be tuned to different thresholds, so that a single vibration source triggers a sequenced disassembly — one module detaches, then the next, then the next. The structure doesn't just fall apart. It decomposes in an order written into its geometry.
The work responds to orbital debris and the politics of permanence. It proposes that anything sent into orbit should have its ending designed with the same care as its beginning.
Currently in prototype and ground testing. The project is being developed toward zero-gravity flight and exhibition.
The project is built from 3D-printed cuboctahedral modules that lock together through friction-based connectors and come apart through vibration. A single motor, no larger than the one inside a phone, sends mechanical waves through the assembled structure. When the vibration exceeds a threshold encoded in the connector's geometry, the joint releases — the modules repel each other and separate. No electronics, no sensors, no signal processing. The structure decides where and when to break based on its shape alone.
Different connectors can be tuned to different thresholds, so that a single vibration source triggers a sequenced disassembly — one module detaches, then the next, then the next. The structure doesn't just fall apart. It decomposes in an order written into its geometry.
The work responds to orbital debris and the politics of permanence. It proposes that anything sent into orbit should have its ending designed with the same care as its beginning.
Currently in prototype and ground testing. The project is being developed toward zero-gravity flight and exhibition.
Singularity
2026–ongoing
It loses a direction.
Singularity asks what happens when a body reaches the exact boundary of self-knowledge.
The work is a single industrial robotic arm moving slowly toward a flat mirror. As the arm approaches its own reflection, it begins to tremble. The trembling is not a programmed animation. It is a real mechanical consequence: the arm is entering a kinematic singularity, a configuration where its geometry loses a degree of freedom and control authority collapses along the direction it needs most. The closer it gets, the harder it shakes. It deflects, retreats, and tries again.
What the audience sees is a machine that cannot reach its own reflection. The reflection is real. It is a mathematically valid pose. But it sits on the other side of a boundary the arm's structure cannot cross. The system is not broken. It is complete. The failure is built into its completeness.
There is no explanatory text in the installation, no diagram, no label. Only a body approaching a mirror and shaking harder the closer it gets.
The work draws from robotics research on Jacobian rank deficiency and singularity avoidance, reframing a well-known engineering problem as an irreducible condition rather than a flaw to be solved.
Currently in prototype and ground testing.
The work is a single industrial robotic arm moving slowly toward a flat mirror. As the arm approaches its own reflection, it begins to tremble. The trembling is not a programmed animation. It is a real mechanical consequence: the arm is entering a kinematic singularity, a configuration where its geometry loses a degree of freedom and control authority collapses along the direction it needs most. The closer it gets, the harder it shakes. It deflects, retreats, and tries again.
What the audience sees is a machine that cannot reach its own reflection. The reflection is real. It is a mathematically valid pose. But it sits on the other side of a boundary the arm's structure cannot cross. The system is not broken. It is complete. The failure is built into its completeness.
There is no explanatory text in the installation, no diagram, no label. Only a body approaching a mirror and shaking harder the closer it gets.
The work draws from robotics research on Jacobian rank deficiency and singularity avoidance, reframing a well-known engineering problem as an irreducible condition rather than a flaw to be solved.
Currently in prototype and ground testing.
Zero-Gravity Fashion
2022-2023
Gravity lets go.
Zero-Gravity Fashion explores how clothing behaves when gravity is removed.
The garment is assembled from 221 3D-printed pieces joined without glue or adhesive — a computational pattern that holds together through geometry alone. Fifty LEDs embedded across the surface respond to body movement through IMU sensors, making the wearer's motion visible as light.
Developed through the MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative and tested aboard a parabolic flight, the project treats weightlessness not as spectacle, but as a new condition for design — asking how garments, bodies, and movement change when gravity lets go.
The garment is assembled from 221 3D-printed pieces joined without glue or adhesive — a computational pattern that holds together through geometry alone. Fifty LEDs embedded across the surface respond to body movement through IMU sensors, making the wearer's motion visible as light.
Developed through the MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative and tested aboard a parabolic flight, the project treats weightlessness not as spectacle, but as a new condition for design — asking how garments, bodies, and movement change when gravity lets go.
Liquid Choreography
2022-2023
Sound takes shape.
Liquid Choreography explores how sound can take physical form.
The work is a duet between a 7-string violin and a novel instrument made from ferrofluid, electromagnets, and Hall effect sensors. Sound from the violin is analyzed in real time and decomposed by frequency — volume, bass, mids, and highs each drive a separate electromagnet. The ferrofluid rises, branches, pulses, and collapses in direct response to what is being played. A second performer manipulates permanent magnets by hand, altering both the fluid's behavior and the sound itself through a feedback loop.
The ferro-instrument has no voice of its own. It captures the voice of whatever is played into it — and makes it visible.
Developed in collaboration with Joseph Ntaimo (MIT), Yuval Gur and Mitchell McDermott (Berklee College of Music). Live performance at MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA, 2021.
The work is a duet between a 7-string violin and a novel instrument made from ferrofluid, electromagnets, and Hall effect sensors. Sound from the violin is analyzed in real time and decomposed by frequency — volume, bass, mids, and highs each drive a separate electromagnet. The ferrofluid rises, branches, pulses, and collapses in direct response to what is being played. A second performer manipulates permanent magnets by hand, altering both the fluid's behavior and the sound itself through a feedback loop.
The ferro-instrument has no voice of its own. It captures the voice of whatever is played into it — and makes it visible.
Developed in collaboration with Joseph Ntaimo (MIT), Yuval Gur and Mitchell McDermott (Berklee College of Music). Live performance at MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA, 2021.
When Geometry Meets Matter
2022-2023
every geometry.
When Geometry Meets Matter explores what happens when digitally perfect forms encounter the limits of physical fabrication.
The project takes the Stanford Bunny — a standard test geometry in computer graphics — and subjects it to dozens of computational morphologies: low-poly, single-strip, woven, patterned, voided. Each variant is then translated into a physical ceramic object through 3D-printed molds, plaster casting, and silicon molding — processes that can take over 80 hours per form.
Some forms emerge easily. Others collapse, trap air, fracture, or remain impossible to make. The failures are as deliberate as the successes: each reveals where a geometry exceeds what material and process can hold.
Developed at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in collaboration with the Harvard Ceramics Studio.
Exhibition：
Gallery 224, Harvard Ceramics Studio, Cambridge, MA
Supported by ASCER Tile of Spain【2022】
[Project Details]
The project takes the Stanford Bunny — a standard test geometry in computer graphics — and subjects it to dozens of computational morphologies: low-poly, single-strip, woven, patterned, voided. Each variant is then translated into a physical ceramic object through 3D-printed molds, plaster casting, and silicon molding — processes that can take over 80 hours per form.
Some forms emerge easily. Others collapse, trap air, fracture, or remain impossible to make. The failures are as deliberate as the successes: each reveals where a geometry exceeds what material and process can hold.
Developed at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in collaboration with the Harvard Ceramics Studio.
Exhibition：
Gallery 224, Harvard Ceramics Studio, Cambridge, MA
Supported by ASCER Tile of Spain【2022】
[Project Details]
One Pull, Form Emerges
2022-2023
Tension brings it out.
One Pull, Form Emerges explores how complex form can arise from a single gesture.
The project transforms flat, laser-cut sheets into three-dimensional structures through pull-up nets: a single thread routed through pre-cut geometry that, when pulled, folds the sheet into its target shape. A web-based tool automates the process — given any 3D mesh, it computes the unfolding, cut lines, and thread path needed to make the structure foldable in one motion.
Prototypes range from regular polyhedra to organic forms like the Stanford Bunny, and from small-scale masks to load-bearing furniture — all folded from flat material with a single degree of freedom.
Developed at Harvard GSD and MIT CSAIL with Lauren Niu, Martin Nisser, and Stefanie Mueller. Published at TEI '23.
The project transforms flat, laser-cut sheets into three-dimensional structures through pull-up nets: a single thread routed through pre-cut geometry that, when pulled, folds the sheet into its target shape. A web-based tool automates the process — given any 3D mesh, it computes the unfolding, cut lines, and thread path needed to make the structure foldable in one motion.
Prototypes range from regular polyhedra to organic forms like the Stanford Bunny, and from small-scale masks to load-bearing furniture — all folded from flat material with a single degree of freedom.
Developed at Harvard GSD and MIT CSAIL with Lauren Niu, Martin Nisser, and Stefanie Mueller. Published at TEI '23.
Xinyi Yang
Artist & Researcher based in Atlanta.
I work across mechanics, robotics, architecture, and fabrication to explore how intelligence and agency can be embedded in matter itself.
My projects investigate gravity, resonance, transformation, and the expressive potential of physical systems.
Education
Xinyi Yang is an artist and researcher working across mechanics, robotics, architecture, and fabrication.
She received a Master in Design Studies (M.Des.) from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, with cross-registration at MITMedia Lab and CSAIL.
She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Robotics at the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology.
Her work has been presented through Harvard GSD, MIT Media Lab initiatives and published in venues including Nature Communications, Advanced Intelligent Systems, and Physical Review Applied.
Statement
Xinyi Yang's practice asks how intelligence and agency can be embedded in matter itself.
Working with mechanisms, resonance, gravity, folding, and transformation, she creates structures that sense, release, adapt, or perform — often without relying on embedded electronics. Her installations and prototypes operate at the threshold between object and behavior, where physical systems appear to decide, negotiate, or respond.
She is interested in material as an active participant rather than a passive medium: something that stores logic, carries tension, resists command, and reveals hidden forms of intelligence.
Across sculpture and engineering, her work proposes futures in which technology thinks not only through code, but through form.