A Hundred Metres of Cypress

A data portrait of Asia’s tallest tree uses 80 million data points to create a 102.3-metre scroll, translating precipitation into the texture strokes of ink painting.

CONTEXT / ROLE

Work by Danqing Shi, Guo Qinghua’s research group, Institute of Remote Sensing, Peking University / Participating artist

RESEARCHInterdisciplinary / Environmental imagination

Drawing apparatus and installationVIEW IMAGE

02LI XIANG / 2025

A data portrait of Asia’s tallest tree

The work takes Asia’s tallest tree as the subject of a data-based study. Eighty million data points form a 102.3-metre scroll, bringing the scale of the tree into an extended ink-painting format.

03LI XIANG / 2025

Cypress scroll — time-lapse

04LI XIANG / 2025

Precipitation and ink texture

Precipitation is mapped to the texture strokes of ink painting. This connection between environmental data and painterly language forms an interdisciplinary collaboration with Guo Qinghua’s research group at Peking University’s Institute of Remote Sensing, with a contribution to the artwork’s creation in 2025.

Cypress data portrait — complete scrollVIEW IMAGE