RUIZHI LIU
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
03: Human Manual 2025
Human Manual is a textual experiment that reconstructs the internal logic of instructional guides through extreme redundancy and chaotic sequencing. Drawing from fields like medicine, machinery, and consumer goods, the project splices technical specifications, safety warnings, and operational guidelines into disorderly collages, erasing industry boundaries. These “normative languages” collide in unfamiliar combinations, creating a reading experience oscillating between information overload and semantic dislocation.
Framed by a “function-result-state” structure, the work crafts a seemingly rational yet fragmented narrative. Mixed jargon, reordered commands, and fractured logic push viewers to decode dense texts, only to reveal the deconstructible nature of linguistic authority. Beyond subverting manuals, the project metaphorizes information society: in an era of data deluge, individual cognition is molded, manipulated, and disciplined. Is language’s objectivity merely an illusion? When functional instructions morph into absurd textual landscapes, does it expose how we are “formatted” by standardized systems?
Viewers navigate both the mirage of technological rationality and the poetic absurdity within chaotic information flows. Using manuals as a medium, the work interrogates trust in directives, data, and order, while dismantling and reassembling language to question how standardization shapes lived experience.