June 20, 2025
字圆其说 x Work Hack
Open Projector
Jing Chai (Project’s PI) and Jack B. Du (Project’s Technology Advisor) joined the monthly gathering of Word Hack at Wonderville, a beloved indie arcade bar and creative hub nestled in Bushwick, NYC. Known for its retro game machines, experimental installations, and vibrant community of artist-engineers, Wonderville sits at the intersection of language, code, and culture. Run by an NYU professor, it also serves as an unofficial outpost of the ITP community as a space where the lines between art, technology, and storytelling blur.
During the Open Projector session, Jing presented the I Got One project and Jack presented papercutting.art, a self-made simulation of the traditional Chinese paper-cutting art that engages with modern users, to a room full of curious minds: poets-turned-programmers, coders with a love of linguistics, and artists building worlds out of text and syntax. The crowd was instantly drawn into the projects’ fusion of ancient Chinese scripts, modern cultural interpretation, and participatory media design.
With humor, insight, and clear passion, Jing and Jack shared respectively how the project leverages tools like interactive websites, physical installations, and playful cross-cultural storytelling to reimagine Chinese character learning and traditional Chinese art practices as a collaborative, expressive act. The audience responded with warm applause and spontaneous connections. Many expressing surprise and delight that something so visually poetic and culturally specific could also feel so open and globally resonant.
The night ended in classic Word Hack fashion: with post-talk conversations over pixelated arcade screens, speculative questions about technology, language and traditional art, and an invitation to keep hacking the boundaries of what language can be. I Got One found its tribe among the brilliant misfits of Wonderville, and reminded everyone that a single character can hold an entire cosmos.