Meet Gelei Mai | Multimedia Designer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Gelei Mai and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Gelei, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
Risk is the eventualization of the abstract concept of insecurity. Personally, I see risk as defined not by itself but by how it is constructed into narratives, strategies, and events by human beings. The COVID-19, for instance, in itself is a medical term; the controversial public policies on its outspread, the unstable countermeasures of the healthcare system, and furthermore, the social isolation and negative sentiments it spurred, become risks. Risk opens up problem space and therefore exposes opportunities. For me, I believe in taking actions under risks as an effective analytical tool in design and evaluation – it endeavors to propose alternative value beyond the current(often negative) social construction of risks. I have worked in education product for years, and a large part of the thriving landscape of the business I work for is the result of designing unconventional product against the existing pedagogy. We aim to be the first in the market to systemize explorative learning modules with all ages in the field of art and design, with the awareness that it challenges the dominating market of procedural learning in China. This eventually pays off when we witness our students grow to be more critical and responsible human beings, rewriting the risky story of “distractive” learning pattern to a future-oriented happy ending.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I have a few personal media art projects and several academic/venture design projects at hands. I focus on rethinking human agency in the world of contemporary media. My objective is to carry sophisticated visceral experiences which are specific to sites, cultures, or personal perceptions with digital media, so as to experiment with creating “quasi-presence”: a form of existence by manifesting the invisible through the visible. Coming from an architectural design background and studying/working as a multi-media designer currently, half of my skills are self-taught during the time of the pandemic, when digital tools became crucial for quality survival. It was also when I came to realize the ability to access resources during scarcity is a privilege, and digital media is one of the few that could possibly create fairness due to its placeless-ness. These digital resources got me into Harvard’s Master of Design Engineering program now, and in return, I strive to build experiences that diminish dependency on privileges. – to someone who hardly has a chance to overcome one’s living conditions, a multi-media representation might be as close as one can get.
I am currently partnering with design and tech talents Vera and Mackenzie to work on a platform that allows hyper-interactive experience sharing and community building based on VR and AI-enhanced recognition, scripting, and 3D scanning technologies. We hope to enable our users to experiment and discover what truly matters to them, aiding them in making informed life decisions.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I am currently based in Cambridge, Boston, but I identify more with my hometown, Guangzhou, China, as “my area”. Guangzhou is the heart of Cantonese culinary culture, so this week long trip just has to be full of amazing food! We have local dim-sum places that opens till 4 A.M., where you get to meet the best everyday-people-turned-gourments; we have century-old valleys of local freshness and folk art/architecture, where the smell of braised goose penetrates feature upturned eaves and intricate wooden roof brackets. Comparing to metropolis like Shanghai, Guangzhou may not be so much filled with galleries, music festivals, and other contemporary highlights, but it is still one of the biggest center of subcultural communities and events including ComicCons, BookCons, and indie music lives. If any of these is of your interest to explore, we can certainly spend a few days shopping through artist books, fan-made comics, and end the night with a show from my favorite local band Wu Tiao Ren, and a sizzling pot of beef rice noodle hidden in the old town district.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I am one of the biggest self-talkers among all I know throughout my life. I deconstruct my arts, my designs, my writings and random thoughts bits after bits, answering questions I invented for myself whenever I have a chance. That being said, I myself is not the one I owe an appreciation to – it is those who bear with my compulsive behavior of analyzing almost everything that I dedicate to. My dear comrades in the world of creative art and writing, Ruichao, Lik, Russell, Lilian, and Shurelya, and my partner of life, Eddy. Without their insights and witty lines, their inspiring stories and arts, there will never be any meaningful projection of my thoughts into the realm of reality. I would not have made my own work if not witnessing their determination to make theirs. In an alternative universe, I am merely a passive agent living in a void, untethered to the vast material reality around her, with not a word written, not a stroke laid.

Website: https://ectinge.wixsite.com/portfolio

Instagram: @razzmatazzzzz

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gelei-grace-mai-955401142/