The Art of Experimentation with Marshall Meixuan Wang

I submitted this piece because I wanted to see if a personal, slightly unconventional project could resonate on a broader stage. The work came from a place of curiosity and care. I was designing to explore something I felt was missing in the conversation. Entering it into a competition like the NYX Awards felt like a way to test whether that impulse could translate to a wider audience.

Winning to me is a reminder that intuitive, research-driven design can hold emotional and cultural weight. Creative work built from nuance and risk doesn’t have to be niche. Professionally, it opens the door to conversations I’ve been wanting to have, with people and studios who value design that’s rigorous but also poetic. I see this as momentum, not a finish line.

The project came out of a desire to slow down and reframe how we relate to systems that often feel invisible or overwhelming. I was thinking a lot about how design can be used as a tool to speculate intimacy with infrastructure: how visual language can soften, clarify, or even ritualize the way we interact with things like the Big Bang. The piece was born from that tension: between narration and feeling, data and desire.

The original essay I wrote, which later turned into the script, was inspired by Nora Khan's lecture "The Artificial and the Real", where she discusses the blurring boundaries between artificial systems and human perception, questioning how these developments affect our concepts of authenticity and existence. The speculation of AI technology leads me to a re-imagination of life-forms. On expanding the notion of life, and a future of co-existence.

Atlas of Life is a piece of film that explores the betweenness of system, aesthetics, simulacra, and the reality we nest in. By using graphic essay as the main agency, this piece of work explore the lacunae and precariousness of life-forms, and searching dissonant chorus in the natural and constructed world through a poetic and graphical approach.

One of the biggest challenges was figuring out how to balance clarity with nuance. The subject matter was dense and systemic by nature, and I didn’t want to dilute it—but I also didn’t want to alienate people with too much abstraction or jargon. There were moments where I felt stuck between being too didactic and too poetic.

What helped me move through that tension was stepping back and reframing the work as an invitation, not an explanation. I started thinking more in terms of choreography—how the audience moves through the piece, what emotions or questions surface along the way.

I leaned on prototyping, writing, and testing as design tools, not just execution stages. That shift in mindset helped me reconnect with the core intention: to build something generous, layered, and legible on multiple levels.

In the end, the obstacle wasn’t just technical but was about trusting that complexity can be communicated with care, and that good design makes room for ambiguity without losing its voice!

Winning this award has definitely offered me visibility, but more importantly, it validated a way of working that feels honest to me. I hope it signals to future collaborators, studios, or agencies that thoughtful, systems-aware design has a place at the table, and that it can be both conceptual and highly crafted.

Someone described the piece as “quietly radical”—and I loved that.

Start with a question that actually keeps you up at night. Stay close to your process. Try to do everything because that's how you learn the most, whether from the tools you're exploring or from yourself.

Atlas of Life was a piece of experiment that lasted a year long, from script writing, idea researching, content sourcing, music composing, learning new technologies, and designing with AI. I made sure to understand the relevancy of all aspects of the creative process and crafted what I think would be the best.

I want to try as much as possible. Be the designer, be the film-maker, be the music composer, and be the creative tech artist, all because I can. I see being a creative individual as a holistic approach, rather than one singular label.

I want to be in spaces, whether studios, collectives, or labs—where experimentation is strategic, not just aesthetic. Where design is a tool for systems-thinking, storytelling, and care. Currently, I founded Sequence Giftshop, an artist collective exploring gestures of care through object making and independent publishing. Together with friends, I hope to build this platform as a bridge, connecting audiences and creatives.

I totally get the hesitation. Don't second-guess yourself. Share before you feel fully ready. That’s where growth lives.

We’re in an industry that often moves fast, prizes novelty, and rewards polish—but real creativity takes time, care, and context. So keep showing up, keep experimenting, and trust that your voice matters, even when it doesn’t echo what’s trending.

I’m deeply grateful to my friends for helping me surface ideas that had been buried deep in my mind. A special thanks to my music composition instructor for generously sharing his Kalimba and guiding me in creating the perfect soundscape for this piece.

"We’re troops, architects, a collective force, hive minds, swarms, and gravity; we can be the ocean, the current, the red giant, the overseer, and the accumulation of patterns and behaviors."

Life forms are layered, mythic, and expansive, just like the internet, the technology, and the data.

I’m the co-proprietor of Sequence Giftshop, which I run alongside my partners Rui and Yi. Since summer 2024, we’ve produced four books, designed six objects, hosted two workshops, collaborated with seven artists, created over ten prints, and participated in six art book fairs. I’m excited to keep building this practice—and to grow alongside it as it continues to evolve.