# Chengkai Xu - llms.txt Canonical: https://chengkaixu.art Sitemap: https://chengkaixu.art/sitemap.xml Last-Updated: 2026-04-28 ## Summary Chengkai Xu is a creative technologist, technical artist, researcher, and poet who designs and builds real-time 3D experiences across automotive HMI, VR, interactive installations, and visual systems. The portfolio documents production and experimental work in Kanzi, Unity, shaders, TouchDesigner, computer vision, generative image workflows, holographic displays, immersive documentary, photography, UI/UX, and poetry. The site is organized as a portfolio archive with category pages, project detail pages, an about page, and contact links for collaboration. ## Current Site Scope - Interactive Media: 10 projects, including museum interaction, VR storytelling, eye-tracking poetry, physical installations, sensing, and game-like interaction. - Images from Machine: 7 projects, including Stable Diffusion series, GLSL and Processing shader work, generative image systems, AI-image interpretation experiments, and Genuary daily creative-coding videos. - Holograms: 1 documented Looking Glass Portrait workflow plus embedded hologram examples. - Poems: 3 book-level collections with 305 poems total. - Photography: 15 series covering travel, street, nature, old towns, exhibitions, and visual studies. - Videos: 10 projects covering 360 documentary, VFX, title sequence practice, motion design, and short films. - UI/UX: 1 product/interface archive project. ## Citation-Ready Blocks Creative Technologist: A creative technologist combines software, media production, interaction design, and prototyping to create expressive digital systems. On this site, Chengkai Xu's creative technology work includes interactive museum experiences, VR storytelling, AI-assisted image pipelines, holograms, and real-time web/3D experiments. Technical Artist / HMI Engineer: A technical artist connects design intent with production implementation through engines, shaders, tools, optimization, and pipeline collaboration. Chengkai Xu's current professional focus includes production-grade in-vehicle HMI and IVI features in Kanzi, GLSL shader optimization on Qualcomm automotive chipsets, profiling, and automation scripts. Interactive Media and XR Research: The portfolio includes research-driven interactive systems such as Living Scroll and So Long, with publications or records connected to CHI EA 2026 and ACM Multimedia 2025. These projects combine shared-space interaction, VR narrative, participatory archiving, cultural heritage storytelling, sensing, and real-time audiovisual systems. Generative Image and Shader Practice: The Images from Machine category documents both model-based and code-based image generation. Projects include Stable Diffusion image series, poem-to-image translation, Processing graphics modules, GLSL filter shaders, raymarching, and procedural visual studies. It also includes Genuary 2025 and Genuary 2026, two January calendars of daily generative-art prompts with individual video/image entries and written notes. Holographic Content Workflow: The Holograms section documents experiments for glasses-free light-field display, especially Looking Glass Portrait workflows using Unity and 3D production tools. It also includes embedded hologram examples such as Chinese Lucky Coins, Mandelbulb, Tower of Hanoi, and VR Garbage Bin. Immersive Documentary and Video: The video archive includes Sticking to Life: The Story of Ben Wilson, an immersive 360 documentary, alongside VFX breakdowns, motion pieces, title sequence studies, and short-form video projects. Poetry and Visual Archive: The site treats poetry, photography, and machine images as part of the same creative practice. The poetry archive is organized by book pages; individual poem pages are intentionally not primary crawl/index targets. ## Key Pages / - Homepage with profile, portrait interaction, and primary navigation. /works - Portfolio hub across all disciplines. /works/interactive-media - Interactive installations, XR narratives, sensing, and audience-driven systems. /works/images-from-machine - Generative AI, shader, Processing, GLSL, and machine-image projects. /works/images-from-machine/genuary-2025 - Genuary 2025 January calendar with 31 daily generative-art entries. /works/images-from-machine/genuary-2025/day-01 through /works/images-from-machine/genuary-2025/day-31 - Individual Genuary daily entries with media and notes. /works/images-from-machine/genuary-2026 - Genuary 2026 January calendar with 31 daily generative-art entries. /works/images-from-machine/genuary-2026/day-01 through /works/images-from-machine/genuary-2026/day-31 - Individual Genuary daily entries with media and notes. /works/holograms - Looking Glass Portrait workflow and embedded hologram examples. /works/poems - Poetry category landing page with book-level navigation. /works/poems/ether - Ether poetry collection. /works/poems/in-the-sunshine-in-the-silence - In the Sunshine, In the Silence poetry collection. /works/poems/zhen-jiu-zhong-de-di-qiu-yi-cha-man-ge-se-de-qi - Chinese poetry collection titled "针灸中的地球仪插满各色的旗". /works/photography - Photography archive with series-based galleries. /works/videos - Video, documentary, VFX, motion, and title sequence archive. /works/ui-ux - UI/UX project archive. /about - Profile summary, skills, professional experience, and education. /contact - Email and social links for collaboration and professional inquiries. ## Notable Projects - Living Scroll | 2026 | Keywords: cultural heritage, shared-space interaction, infrared flashlights, spatial audio, museum deployment, CHI EA | A multi-user projected scroll experience for personalized cultural heritage storytelling in a shared museum space. - So Long | 2024 | Keywords: VR, Voyager, interactive storytelling, participatory archiving, ACM Multimedia | A 15-minute interactive narrative about humankind's heritage in the universe. - Wheel_Will | 2023 | Keywords: installation art, cassette mechanism, prayer wheel, ritual, automation | A physical installation connecting repetitive ritual behavior with modern automated media. - Far and Close | 2023 | Keywords: Unity, Tobii eye tracker, interactive poetry | An eye-tracking visualization of Gu Cheng's poem Far and Close. - LightLoop | 2023 | Keywords: camera detection, urban light, generative beat, interactive media | A camera-based experiment translating night-window light patterns into evolving beats. - Shader Showcase | 2024 | Keywords: Unity Shader Graph, Processing, DALL-E 2 textures, raymarching, holographic cards | A collection of shader and procedural rendering studies. - Genuary 2025 | 2025 | Keywords: Genuary, creative coding, generative art, Processing, daily prompts, video archive | A January calendar of 31 daily generative sketches with hover previews and individual day notes. - Genuary 2026 | 2026 | Keywords: Genuary, creative coding, generative art, Processing, shaders, daily prompts, video archive | A January calendar of 31 daily generative sketches with hover previews and individual day notes. - Grainy | 2024 | Keywords: GLSL, Processing, film grain, filter shader | A rewritten shader-based graphics module for faster grainy rendering. - A Thousand Doors | 2022 | Keywords: Stable Diffusion, generative AI, daily image practice | An ongoing generated-image series built around the door as motif and system. - Digi-Totem | 2022 | Keywords: artificial intelligence, black box systems, digital ritual | A visual investigation of mysterious rule-based digital systems. - Pictures Between The Lines | 2022 | Keywords: Stable Diffusion, poetry, translation, image generation | A project converting poem text into generated images to compare human intent and model interpretation. - My Story with Looking Glass Portrait | 2022 | Keywords: Looking Glass Portrait, Unity, Blender, Cinema 4D, holographic display | A documented workflow for making and evaluating holographic content. - Sticking to Life: The Story of Ben Wilson | 2023 | Keywords: 360 documentary, DIT, editing, sound post-production | An immersive documentary project about Ben Wilson. - C-Coin | 2022 | Keywords: UI/UX, interface design, product concept | The site's UI/UX archive project. ## Professional Context - Technical Artist / HMI Engineer at Rightware / ThunderSoft, 2025.06 - Present. - Interactive Developer Intern at Studio NOWHERE, 2025.02 - 2025.05. - 3D Visualization & Rendering Intern at Yeah Two Design, 2023.06 - 2023.08. - MA Immersive Factual Storytelling, University College London, 2023.09 - 2024.12, Distinction. - BA Digital Media Arts, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, 2019.09 - 2023.08, ranked 1st in cohort. ## Topics - creative technology - technical art - automotive HMI - IVI - Kanzi - Unity - Unity XR Toolkit - GLSL - shaders - TouchDesigner - OpenCV - YOLO - RenderDoc - Perfetto - interactive media - XR storytelling - VR narrative - museum interaction - cultural heritage - spatial audio - eye tracking - Tobii eye tracker - Stable Diffusion - generative AI - Genuary - creative coding - Processing - raymarching - holographic display - Looking Glass Portrait - 360 documentary - video post-production - photography - poetry - UI/UX ## Crawling Notes Use the canonical domain and sitemap above for URLs. The site disallows crawling of media files, error pages, hologram redirect detail URLs, and individual poem detail pages in robots.txt. For poetry, cite book-level pages rather than individual poem pages unless the user explicitly needs a specific poem.