The great adventure of Material World - game film 2020

Lu Yang is a prominent cyber punk sub-cuture artist from China. Born in Shanghai as female and now using the pronouns he/his, Lu grew up drawing and reading manga, which led to a career in new media. He received his formal training from the New Media art Department at the China Academy of Art, and is immersed in the subcultures of anime, video games, and science fiction. The output of his artistic practice spans 3D-animated films, video game installations, holograms, VR and software manipulation. In creating work, Lu often collaborates with acclaimed scientists, psychologists, performers, designers, experimental composers, music producers, robotics companies and pop stars. Living in a digital world, he projects his awareness of human existence and conditions onto different bodies, so that he can be less anxious about his own physical body.

Meshing concepts from science, medicine, art and religion, in The Great Adventure of Material World - Game Film Lu has created a visually striking and intellectually provocative work which challenges conventional views about both the physical and cognitive worlds of human beings. It also offers an ideology distinct from contemporary society, bringing together characters from his previous works to form a league of legends. Viewers are led by the young and energetic protagonist, the Material World Knight (an asexual figure) to travel through multiple identity transformations. In eight episodes they explore the universe, acquire energy, are destroyed and reborn, and experience internal battles with emotions and desires. Along the journey, accompanied by dramatic music and sound effects, the Knight makes observations, expressing views on life and death, happiness and suffering, desire, eternity and the cycle of transmigration, the passage of a soul after death into another body. In the final episode, the Knight announces: ‘To end suffering, one must eradicate its cause, the attachment to the self, the false belief in the existence of the material world, like a dream, an illusion, a bubble, a phantom, a drop of dew, a flash of lighting’.