Synthesation of Tomorrow: Candice Wu’s Solo Exhibition Opens at Arts District
Los Angeles, CA — Stepping into a dimly lit loft in the arts district, visitors find themselves surrounded by glowing screens, each serving as a portal into a speculative future. Artist and technologist Candice Wu’s solo exhibition, “Synthesation of Tomorrow,” opened this October, casting a shadowy ambiance where illuminated projections, screens, and CRT monitors invite audiences to explore new worlds.
The exhibition, spanning Wu’s work from 2021 to 2024, is a collection of speculative narratives driven by technology. Each piece is a “synthesized” vision of tomorrow, merging experimental storytelling with real-time rendering, AI, and interactive installations. From futuristic cities to AI-reimagined mythological creatures, Wu’s exhibits an immersive hub of small worlds, each asking visitors to rethink the potential of technology as a storyteller.
At the heart of the exhibition is Erasure (2024), a speculative film that imagines a future city layered with augmented reality over a foundation of recycled materials. Subtle digital “glitches” reveal the concealed physical world beneath the pristine augmented surface, exposing a raw, imperfect foundation. The story follows a single day in the city, culminating in a collective moment during a fireworks display when the augmented layer fades, unveiling the city’s true form. Erasure is both a technical feat—rendered almost entirely with a real-time game engine—and a meditation on memory, history, and our reliance on digital narratives to shape reality.
“I want Erasure to spark reflection on what gets ‘erased’ in our digital lives,” Wu says. “In a world that prioritizes the sleek and the new, it’s a reminder that history, in all its raw forms, remains part of our foundations.”
A Multi-Sensory Experience
The exhibition is designed as a deeply experiential journey. Each work is positioned to draw viewers into its world — high-set projections for a grand perspective, and lower, intimate setups for pieces on CRTs and TVs. One particularly interactive piece, D’Sync (2022), places visitors in a surreal subway environment where their movements shape the virtual space, merging tactile exploration with digital transformation.
With lighting intentionally sparse, the screens illuminate the space, each display framing a new world or narrative. Wu draws on her background in architecture and digital art, integrating subtle details that encourage audiences to explore the space with a sense of curiosity. “Each screen is a portal into a different imagining of the future,” she shares. “This setup encourages people to engage physically and mentally with these stories, instead of passively observing.”
A Thoughtful Reflection on Technology and Culture
Wu’s work combines her fascination with emerging technologies and her cultural background, grounding her speculative stories in a deeply collective perspective. Growing up in China, she developed an appreciation for shared memory, which she now uses as a foundation in her work. “For me, technology is not a departure from our humanity but a synthesis of our collective memories and histories,” she explains. This ethos is evident in the piece like Erasure and The Ninth Wave (2023), which explores futures of shared memory either impacted by augmented reality, or change in ecosystem after global warming.Together, these works imagine a world where technology serves as a bridge to deeper human connections.
Rather than painting a dystopian vision, Wu’s exhibition embraces technology’s role in preserving and reshaping our stories. “Synthesation of Tomorrow” invites viewers to consider how the future evolve in harmony with, rather than in contrast to, our current world. As Wu notes, “These works aren’t meant to predict the future but to imagine the possibilities when technology and humanity evolve together.”