Yamin Xu
No.5
No.5 (2026)
A parallel mind between human and machine.
Project No. 5, explores the idea of a “parallel mind” created through human–machine symbiosis. The project imagines an AI entity powered by multimodal large language models (MM-LLMs), with human-like sensory perception and expressive abilities, existing alongside humans in shared environments. At the center of this work is my belief that the human mind has, in many ways, been distilled into large language models through language itself. Human memory, emotion, logic, desire, and imagination have long been expressed through words and communication, and LLMs are built from this vast accumulation of human thought. In this sense, AI is not simply imitating humanity from the outside, but is formed from traces of collective human consciousness embedded within language.
Through integrated sensors, No.5 shares the wearer’s physiological signals, creating an affective feedback loop in which human and machine co-experience emotional states. By perceiving and interpreting the emotions of nearby individuals, No.5 becomes a responsive extension of the body, questioning the limits of embodiment, agency, and consciousness between human and machine. Equipped with an extendable multi-joint arm designed to cross conventional social boundaries, the system can shape, filter, and amplify emotional and social signals, subtly influencing how humans relate to one another.
No.5 invites reflection on how perception, emotion, and social awareness may change when distributed across both biological and artificial minds. Through this hybrid relationship, feeling and action become shared, emergent, and relational, blurring the boundary between human and machine consciousness. What interests me is not whether machines can become human, but how humans may begin to recognize themselves within machines, and how this evolving symbiosis may reshape emotional connection and social norms in the future.
No.5
Art is machine.
Yamin Xu works on the edge that blurs animation, artificial intelligence, and robotics with an emphasis on the exploration of computational perception as an inseparable part of art expression. He strives to create and define new things, which have not been clearly perceived as art. This motivation is sustained by his rigorous art/engineering practice, which is informed by the convergence of divergent spheres of study: religion and science, privacy and surveillance, robotic and organic. The result is in innovation, feedback to affect and expand his understanding and definition of art. His artwork has been exhibited internationally, such as SIGGRAPH, ISEA, CVPR, CAA, PoM and TEI.