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I am a creative director and artist in Brooklyn. I was born in Hong Kong, grew up in Canada, and trained in architecture before spending a decade designing concert tours, most recently as creative director for Noah Kahan's The Great Divide. Alongside that work I paint: still lifes about cultural identity, displacement and the occult, drawn from my family's history of migration. The paintings ask how we give objects meaning and power, and whether lost histories can be brought back. Hence burial objects and uncovered treasures have been a source of inspiration for me for years. So when the FLORA Museum Challenge set The Met's open archive as the brief, the choice was not random. I went straight to the ancient Chinese ceremonial bronzes, a series of objects I have visited countless times at the Met as a local New Yorker. Each carries the taotie, a symmetrical animal mask cast into Chinese bronzes for over a thousand years, whose meaning is still debated. Concurrently, I have been quietly exploring the idea of designing jewelry inspired by primitive objects for a while, so the challenge became a way to test out some of those ideas: a five-piece capsule of men's jewelry in sterling silver and jade, a signet ring, a hinged panel bracelet, a chain necklace with a bi disc, a chain bracelet and a mask brooch, followed by a campaign that treats the pieces as found objects returned to the world. During the early 2020s, my curiosity about technology took me into the metaverse, questioning the role of art and architecture in virtual reality, and my foray into node-based generative processes is an extension of that curiosity. This was my first time working in FLORA, and it opened my eyes to a whole new way of thinking and working. What stayed with me is the value of vision. The model can generate without end. What moves the work forward is a creator's intuition, curating, editing and refining until noise becomes something considered. As a creative director and artist, the ability to communicate effectively is invaluable, and I feel empowered by this new way of creating. Original objects, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access: Ritual tripod cauldron (ding), Shang dynasty, 49.135.10 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/61239 Food serving vessel (gui), Shang dynasty, 62.217 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/44617 Wine containers (hu), pair, Western Zhou dynasty, 1988.20.4 and 1988.20.5 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/44515 (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/44515)https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/44516 Ritual altar set, Western Zhou dynasty, 24.72.1–.14 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/76974 Tripod cauldron (ding), Shang dynasty, 1974.268.20 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/49393 Grain serving vessel (gui), Western Zhou dynasty, 13.100.155 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/53558

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Benny Or

Creative director and artist. Live tours, objects, images.