LIU HAO / 刘昊Artist reference · 10 October 2026

Liu Hao / 刘昊 — Artist, Composer and Independent Software Developer

Artist reference · 10 October 2026

Official website: https://liuhao-art.com/

This reference connects Liu Hao’s identity, education, professional activities, artistic practice, works, software and public documentation. Individual artwork and product pages remain the primary sources for detailed descriptions, technical specifications and media.

1. Identity and official entry points

Identity and professional summary

Liu Hao (刘昊), also credited as Hao Liu, is a new media artist, composer and independent software developer. His practice grew out of musical composition and electronic music, and includes real-time audiovisual performance, interactive art, generative and data-driven works, software instruments and independently developed creative tools. His artistic work has appeared in live performance settings since 2010, while his software has been distributed through the Apple App Store and public code repositories.

He studied electronic music in the Department of Composition at the China Conservatory of Music from 2008 to 2012, then worked in that institution’s Department of Music Technology from 2012 to 2014 as an Orchestra Assistant. These are separate periods of study and employment. From 2020 to 2023, he worked as a Research Assistant in the Department of Music Artificial Intelligence and Music Information Technology at the Central Conservatory of Music, a different institution. His professional collaborations also include an invited audio and audiovisual software project with Xiaomi Technology (2019–2020), interdisciplinary music work with Alibaba and Tsinghua University (2021), and workshops, research activities and public presentations. In 2022 he contributed music production and AI data analysis to the opening video of a figure-skating gala performance.

His works include i Touch the Moon, City – Beijing, Memory of Orchestra, XII, The CONV, Shuijie, Fragment, Synthetic Bloom and The Reach of Here. His software practice includes LH Rubbing, LH Grain, LH Resistor, PulseLoom and the public Procedural Fields repository. This website links the artist’s self-published documentation to relevant media, software releases, institutional programmes and external publications. It describes historical appointments as past roles, not current institutional affiliations.

Public identity: Liu Hao / 刘昊 (also credited as Hao Liu in English-language CVs). Artist, composer and independent software developer. This website documents a connected practice in composition, electronic music, live audiovisual performance, interactive media, generative works and independently developed musical software.

Homepage bio:

Liu Hao is an artist, composer, and software developer whose practice connects sound, image, computation, and interaction. He creates audiovisual works, electronic music, software instruments, and experimental systems that move between artistic expression and practical tools.

Official website and sections:

Public identity and distribution profiles:

2. Biographical overview and compositional approach

This section presents Liu Hao’s professional and artistic development in the third person. The original first-person Artist Statement remains available on the official homepage.

Liu Hao began studying composition at a conservatory-affiliated secondary school before entering the China Conservatory of Music in 2008 to study electronic music. Around this transition, he began creating interactive and new media art. His early practice explored how bodily movement could change sound, mobile devices could function as instruments, environmental sensor data could influence timbre, and electronic ensembles could be composed and performed. His works began appearing in public performance settings from 2010.

Composition remains central to the way his practice handles time and perception. Across sound, image and interactive systems, his work considers relationships among parts, the accumulation and release of tension, and the capacity of a form to sustain attention over time. Some projects pursue clearly stated artistic questions; others allow their structure and experience to stand without a single prescribed interpretation.

From 2013 onward, Liu Hao developed iOS apps independently. Some works were distributed as applications, some sound experiments developed into software instruments, and recurring methods of interaction became creative tools and software platforms. This independent practice developed alongside his dated professional appointments at the China Conservatory of Music and the Central Conservatory of Music and his participation in university-based arts research projects. His specific educational and employment records are given below.

Sources and attribution

  • Artist-provided CV / Resume: Artist-provided career record and original descriptions of works, software and activities. Statements about professional participation or roles in this source are the artist’s account.
  • Official artwork and project documentation: Individual Works pages published at liuhao-art.com. These are primary descriptions by the artist, not independent media endorsements.
  • Official product documentation: Individual Apps pages, published manuals and App Store listings. Product availability and features should be read from the linked edition’s own documentation.
  • Artist-published video and code: YouTube documentation and GitHub repositories. These show the artist’s published work but do not independently establish institutional participation.
  • External institutional and media sources: Linked event programmes, organiser reports, interviews and announcements. These are distinct from self-published artwork pages; each supports the information it actually documents.

Historical appointments are dated; the China Conservatory of Music and the Central Conservatory of Music are separate institutions. Links are supplied for traceability and should not all be interpreted as independent third-party verification.

3. Professional activities, institutional relationships and public records

Liu Hao / 刘昊 is a new media artist, composer and independent software developer. His practice spans audiovisual art, interactive systems, generative media, electronic music, creative coding and software instruments. This record brings together his education, professional experience, public activities, works and software releases.

Public profiles: Apple developer catalogue (昊 刘 / LIU HAO): https://apps.apple.com/ie/developer/%E6%98%8A-%E5%88%98/id652348004 ; GitHub: https://github.com/live-a11y ; 2022 Music Weekly artist interview: https://www.huain.com/news/other/2022/0405/1873.html . The Music Weekly interview also describes two App Store editorial features and an international audience across more than 170 countries and regions at the time of the interview.

Education, employment and institutional collaboration

China Conservatory of Music (中国音乐学院)

Central Conservatory of Music (中央音乐学院)

  • 2020–2023 — Department of Music Artificial Intelligence and Music Information Technology. Research Assistant, working on AI music, music technology and related research and technical systems.
  • 2022 — “3D Music” research project. Principal Investigator, investigating spatial-audio trajectories, auditory perception and principles for spatial-audio composition.

Xiaomi Technology

  • 2019–2020 — Invited audio and audiovisual software collaboration. Invited by Xiaomi Technology to lead development on a collaborative audio, audiovisual and interactive software project. Worked directly with the Xiaomi team at the company for a period, leading project development in collaboration with its staff.

Alibaba × Tsinghua University

  • 2021 — “Aromatherapy Music” interdisciplinary project. Led the music group and developed AI-assisted composition methods using quantified aroma-associated emotional labels.

Public activities and research presentations

2021 — World Summit on Music Intelligence

Contributed music interaction design and participated in the proposal-presentation team of the World Summit on Music Intelligence, organised by the Central Conservatory of Music and the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence.

Official programme: https://www.ccom.edu.cn/info/6931/219821.htm

2022 — Tsinghua University Future Laboratory: “Accessible Music” workshop

Participated as a speaker and mentor, discussing new-media art design and interactive music and presenting The CONV.

Related artwork: https://liuhao-art.com/works/the-conv

2022 — Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation: Original Music Festival forum

Participated as a new media artist in the Beijing forum associated with the Original Music Festival on 20 January 2022.

Organiser's event report: https://bcaf.org.cn/2021-3

2022 — Music Weekly profile interview

Featured in Designing an “Instrument” for Each Work, an interview on electronic and computer music, independent software development and audiovisual art.

Interview: https://www.huain.com/news/other/2022/0405/1873.html

2022 — Figure-skating gala performance video

Contributed music production and artificial-intelligence data analysis for the opening video of a figure-skating gala performance.

2023 — GAS Audio Lecture Series

Invited to present Electronic Music and the Development of Music Technology as part of the GAS Audio Lecture Series in May 2023.

Lecture announcement: https://www.52audio.com/archives/161088.html

Independent software and App Store releases

Liu Hao has independently designed and developed electronic music tools, software instruments, audiovisual applications and creative software distributed via Apple's App Store.

Apple developer catalogue: https://apps.apple.com/ie/developer/%E6%98%8A-%E5%88%98/id652348004

Public code and independent software projects

2025 — PulseLoom

An independently developed OSC control sequencer for experimental music and interactive media. Structures parameter changes through multitrack timelines, events and automation curves and transmits control data to external software.

2026 — Procedural Fields (Max/MSP/Jitter C++ externals)

A public collection of custom C++ externals for Max/MSP/Jitter, developed as part of Liu Hao's ongoing computational-art practice. The modules cover procedural geometry, noise, harmonic motion, event and parameter analysis, and audio-reactive systems. The repository includes Max, MSP and Jitter objects and macOS externals.

Selected early performance and presentation records

The following links point to the artist's own documentation of the listed presentations; they should not be confused with independent third-party event verification.

4. Artistic Practice — Development and Continuities

Liu Hao (刘昊) is a new media artist, composer, and independent software developer. Rooted in musical composition, his practice has gradually expanded into real-time audiovisual art, interactive performance, generative imagery, software instruments, and autonomous art installations. Spanning more than two decades, his work has taken different forms, from instrumental and electronic music to computational art, with a continuing interest in the relationships between time, sound, material forms, and human perception, and in how artworks take shape through established structures and changing conditions.

Liu Hao’s work approaches time through composition: sounds emerge, disappear, accumulate and transform, and separate elements come together through their interactions. He gradually brought bodily movement, environmental conditions and real-time events into this musical approach. In i Touch the Moon, bodily gestures shape music; in Memory of Orchestra, collective performance takes place through software and mobile devices; and in City – Beijing, urban footage, environmental sensing and live interaction shape an audiovisual structure. These works treat an artwork not only as a completed object awaiting presentation but also as an unfolding process shaped by participation and changing conditions.

Independent software development extended this practice beyond the stage and exhibition space. Through software, Liu Hao brings together compositional methods, sound generation, visual structure and interaction in systems that can operate independently. XII is both a generative audiovisual artwork and an application that can be carried and used. It is not tied to a single performance: its musical and visual processes can unfold again at other times, on other devices and with other users. Software development is consequently part of the artistic practice itself, rather than merely a technical means of production.

As his work extended into generative art, machine learning and virtual spaces, elements that could not be fully determined in advance became increasingly significant. In 2019, RNN Drawer did not produce a fully trained drawing model; nevertheless, its incomplete and difficult-to-classify images were preserved and later became the starting point for The Vintage Drawings. In Shuijie, water-quality measurements directly influence the generation of visual forms. These works raise questions about what becomes visible, and what is left out, when aspects of the world are translated into data, rules and images. An incomplete or unexpected result can itself become material for artistic development.

Recent works place further attention on how forms emerge and how people assign meaning to them. The CONV presents related movements in different visual bodies, prompting questions about why viewers associate similar movements with life, memory or consciousness in different contexts. In Fragment and Synthetic Bloom, structures gather, destabilize and reorganize, and their forms remain provisional. The Reach of Here extends this concern toward the limits of individual perception and shifting relationships among individuals. Rather than presenting a complete world that could explain or control everything, these works establish conditions with their own order while remaining open to change. Sound, image and computation operate together over time, allowing viewers to encounter not only resulting forms but the processes by which forms come into being and their own relationship to those processes.

Related works and official documentation:

Topic-to-work and software index

These are descriptive cross-references to documented artistic methods and subjects, not additional claims about intent or third-party endorsements. Each linked entry contains its own full description.

5. Works and artistic project lines — full integrated descriptions

01. Synthetic Bloom (2026)

Synthetic Bloom is a real-time generative audiovisual work built from standardized geometric units that repeatedly assemble, lose their stability, branch, proliferate, and reorganize. Its forms look deliberately fabricated—precise, repeatable and almost industrial—yet their continual movement can suggest growth, decay and the uncertain behavior of living matter. The work develops as a temporal composition rather than an indefinitely repeating visual effect: a recurring visual-sonic motif passes through successive states of emergence, disassembly, recombination, proliferation and release. Structure and uncertainty therefore coexist inside a form that remains in the process of becoming.

Both sound and image are generated live. A custom granular DSP engine produces the sound; OpenGL and GLSL generate and animate three-dimensional structures. The current performance system uses MIDI control for real-time triggering and modulation. The same process that gives the work its changing visual body also gives it an evolving musical structure.

Source basis: Artist-provided CV; Official artwork documentation. Links: Official work page · Video excerpt

02. The Reach of Here (2026)

The Reach of Here is an autonomous generative audiovisual installation concerned with partial perception: an individual can respond to what is locally available, but cannot see the whole world in which it exists. Within the work, each individual responds to local conditions. Only those inside a moving field of view can emit sound, and each produces only a tiny fragment of the complete sonic field. The sound is not an accompaniment to this world; it is part of what shapes each individual's form and the connections among them. As the field moves, what can be heard and perceived shifts, and new relations appear.

The work runs autonomously while exhibited. There is no privileged position from which everything becomes visible—not for the individuals inside the system, not for the viewer, and not even for the author who designed its rules. The Reach of Here asks whether “us” describes a fixed whole or a temporary relationship formed by those who happen to be within one another's reach at a given moment.

Source basis: Artist-provided CV; Official artwork documentation. Links: Official work page · Video documentation

03. Fragment (2025–2026)

Fragment is an ongoing real-time audiovisual series in which forms repeatedly gather, stretch, loosen, fragment and reorganize. No image is treated as a completed object: what appears stable is only a temporary organization of motion, density and spatial relationships. Early sketches explored enclosure, axes, frames and volumes before the first audiovisual system took shape. Fragment I develops a particle field whose contours briefly come together and then drift apart; Fragment II extends this process toward skeletal, wireframe and more architectural formations in depth.

The series is created in Max/MSP/Jitter with a custom particle engine and real-time sound processes. The music draws on the pressure, pulse and abrupt energy contrasts associated with dubstep, transformed through computer-music composition. Sound and image respond within the same temporal field, so rhythmic movement, visual density and structural change become inseparable. The work is less about finding a final form than remaining close to the moment at which form becomes visible and changes again.

Source basis: Artist-provided CV; Official artwork documentation. Links: Official work page · Fragment I · Fragment II · Existing video 1 · Existing video 2

04. The CONV (2022–ongoing; documented parts 2022 and 2026)

The CONV is an audiovisual series examining how a change of visible context can alter what a viewer believes a moving system represents. Matter (2022) presents a sound-driven body of particles without a recognizable identity. It stretches, contracts and releases fragments under musical pressure; its movement may be read as physical behavior, but it can also begin to look intentional or alive. Interior (2026) transfers closely related motion into a human head whose surface opens onto streams, particles and unstable internal structures. The underlying behavior remains related, yet viewers may now interpret it as thought, memory, anxiety or consciousness.

The work does not claim that particles are consciousness. It asks why we are inclined to give similar movement such different meanings once it appears inside a human figure. A real-time, sound-driven 3D particle system in Unreal Engine 4 is the technical basis of the series. By holding parts of the audiovisual logic in common while changing its embodiment, The CONV makes interpretation itself part of the work.

Source basis: Artist-provided CV; Official artwork documentation. Links: Official work page · Existing video 1 · Existing video 2

05. Shuijie / 水结 (2023)

Shuijie begins with a question posed in its original exhibition statement: if the structures that science adds to things were removed, what would remain of the things themselves? Water is encountered in daily life as something fluid and difficult to fix in a single form. Environmental measurement, by contrast, represents it as a collection of numerical properties. Shuijie takes this measured body as the material of the work and asks whether forms made from water data can still be understood as water.

The project draws on 3,276 samples from a water-potability dataset. Properties including pH, hardness, dissolved solids, chloramines, conductivity and other measurements are mapped to spatial coordinates, color, transparency and geometry. A real-time Processing system builds an accumulating field of bodies and Bézier connections. Separate 32 × 32 parameter fields were developed into rendered forms with Blender, and the resulting visual material was placed in a navigable virtual exhibition made with Unreal Engine 4. As data accumulate, the resulting world becomes more elaborate, but not necessarily more knowable. The title joins 水 (water) and 结 (joining or forming), referring to a process by which measured relationships acquire a body.

Source basis: Artist-provided CV; Official artwork documentation. Links: Official work page · Virtual-exhibition video · Existing video 1

06. The Vintage Drawings (2023; derived from 2019 experiments)

The Vintage Drawings is a virtual exhibition built from images generated during RNN Drawer, a neural-network experiment begun in 2019. The original recurrent neural network, developed with Python and TensorFlow and trained on several thousand images, did not reach a stable drawing ability. Its output remained uncertain: partially recognizable structures mixed with noise, interrupted contours and unfinished marks. Rather than discard these results because the model had not converged, Liu Hao retained them.

In 2023, the images were returned to and placed in a virtual exhibition. Their meaning had changed alongside the public experience of generative AI. What once looked like an unsuccessful technical experiment could now be seen as a record of an earlier moment, before image-generation systems became highly fluent and widely accessible. The exhibition is therefore not a claim about a perfected AI artist. It preserves the limitations of a small model as visual evidence of an incomplete process, and asks how the passage of time changes the way we see machine-made images.

Source basis: Artist-provided CV; Official artwork documentation. Links: Official work page · Related experiment: RNN Drawer · Existing video 1

07. RNN Drawer (2019)

RNN Drawer began in 2019 as an experiment in machine-generated drawing. Liu Hao developed a recurrent neural network with Python and TensorFlow and trained it on several thousand images. The model did not converge into a consistent drawing technique. Its images hovered between recognizable form and noise, between the suggestion of intention and the visible limits of a narrow computational system.

Those limitations became significant in themselves. Rather than treating the unfinished results simply as a failed model, the project retained the moment when a drawing system had not yet learned to hide its instability. The later virtual exhibition The Vintage Drawings (2023) returned to these surviving images and presented them in a new historical context. Together the two projects document both an artistic experiment with neural-network image generation and the changing cultural position of generative AI.

Source basis: Official artwork documentation; Artist-provided CV. Links: Official work page · Related virtual exhibition

08. REN / 刃 (2022)

REN is an immersive real-time audiovisual work organized around pressure, energy and the image of an edge. The Chinese title 刃 refers to the cutting edge of a blade. In the work, heated surfaces and sharp fragments gather inside a dark space until their density and motion suggest energy condensed into matter. Light, surface and spatial depth give the forms a sense of physical proximity: they can seem metallic, suspended, dangerous or on the verge of being released.

The work was developed through Max/MSP/Jitter and later an Unreal Engine real-time 3D environment. The movement from one system to another is part of its development rather than evidence of a separate artwork. Across versions, sound, light and geometry cooperate to create an experience of tension reaching a material threshold. The result is neither an illustration of a literal blade nor a technical demonstration of 3D rendering, but an audiovisual space constructed around the sensations of sharpness, concentration and release.

Source basis: Official artwork documentation. Links: Official work page · Unreal Engine version · Max/Jitter version · Existing video 1 · Existing video 2

09. XII (2014–2021 documented development)

XII is a generative audiovisual artwork whose form of distribution is also a mobile application. Instead of delivering a fixed composition or video, the application creates music and real-time 3D imagery whenever it runs. A user sets the order of a twelve-tone sequence; the system generates octave placement, durations, velocities, polyphony, tempo, structure and expression around it. The music drives the movement and lighting of a three-dimensional visual environment.

The interface deliberately leaves much of the composition inside the software rather than offering conventional editing controls. Tapping produces notes, gestures rotate the image, and the sequence may run forward or backward; Wi-Fi MIDI can send note activity to external software. Released as an iPhone/iPad application beginning in 2014, XII explores a form of artwork that can be carried, used and reactivated outside the original performance venue. It is both a compositional process and a self-contained audiovisual event, with each execution producing another realization of the underlying system.

Source basis: Artist-provided CV; Official artwork documentation; Official software/product documentation. Links: Official work page · App documentation · Video documentation

10. Memory of Orchestra (2011)

Memory of Orchestra places the familiar formation of a classical orchestra inside a changing technological culture. The performers retain the posture, score, music stands and collective discipline of an ensemble, but their instruments are iPhones. The work brings together a remembered musical institution and the personal devices through which a new generation has begun to encounter and produce sound. What remains of the orchestra is not merely its repertoire, but a coordinated arrangement of bodies, attention, reading, listening and shared time.

Each device becomes a musical interface through its touchscreen and motion sensors. Max/MSP organizes the interaction and real-time processing; Csound generates synthesized material. Performers follow a score and shape sound as it is produced, rather than triggering a prerecorded orchestral result. The substitution is visible before any sound begins: a concert-hall formation is maintained even as its means of production change. By rebuilding collective performance with personal computational devices, the work examines how technology alters not just the sounds of music, but the objects, gestures and social relationships that make an ensemble possible.

Source basis: Artist-provided CV; Official artwork documentation. Links: Official work page · Existing video 1

11. City – Beijing (2011)

City – Beijing is an interactive audiovisual work in which Beijing is continuously reassembled through images, bodies and environmental conditions. Documentary DV footage moves among contrasting urban spaces—commercial streets, monumental public areas, older neighborhoods, crowds, heat, traffic and rapidly changing metropolitan infrastructure. The city is not shown as a single panoramic identity. Order, movement and coordination coexist with interruption, friction and the contradictions of contemporary urban life.

The performance combines Kinect-based bodily input and sensors measuring light, temperature and humidity. In Max/MSP/Jitter, footage is sliced, masked, blurred, distorted, layered and displaced in time; Csound and MSP generate and transform sound through granular synthesis, FM processes, samples and rhythmic material. Physical gestures and environmental readings can affect both sonic and visual behavior. The work nevertheless has a defined sectional composition: its openness to real-time intervention does not eliminate its temporal and musical structure. Here interaction is not an accessory added to an image of the city; it is part of how that city is composed, perceived and temporarily brought into being.

Source basis: Artist-provided CV; Official artwork documentation. Links: Official work page · Existing video 1

12. Light Object (2012)

Light Object treats light as more than illumination. Light can strike the body, change the atmosphere of a space and produce sensations that are difficult to name. The work gives these physical and psychological effects a changing visual form: light may gather, scatter, soften, surge or appear to become a body. The stage image, electronic music and actual stage lighting belong to one performance system, so the boundary between projected form and the surrounding physical environment becomes unstable.

Created in 2012, the work links real-time 3D graphics, granular sound and performer interaction. Max/MSP/Jitter and OpenGL generate and transform visual structures live, Csound produces and processes granular sound, and Art-Net connects the digital system to physical stage lighting. An iPhone serves as a performance controller. Sound, visual geometry and lighting are shaped during the event rather than assembled as separate playback tracks. The title points to the moment when light appears to acquire presence and materiality through the combined experience of sound, image and space.

Source basis: Artist-provided CV; Official artwork documentation. Links: Official work page · Existing video 1

13. eLive (2010)

eLive is a performative real-time electronic work for five players. The work changes the familiar arrangement in which electronic sound can appear to come from an unseen computer while performers have little visible relationship to its production. In eLive, five Bitstream 3X MIDI controllers are placed in the hands of trained performers. Knobs, faders and ribbons become the physical actions through which a shared field of electronic sound is shaped, transformed and coordinated live.

Liu Hao designed a dedicated instrument in Max/MSP for this ensemble. The players must listen and respond to one another, coordinating changes of timbre, density and rhythm through the discipline of collective performance. The controller is no longer a technical accessory placed next to the music: it becomes a visible instrument and a way of organizing the ensemble. The work presents electronic sound production as an action performed in front of an audience rather than as an invisible process behind a concert.

Source basis: Artist-provided CV; Official artwork documentation. Links: Official work page · Existing video 1

14. i Touch the Moon (2010)

i Touch the Moon is an interactive electroacoustic performance in which a handheld device and the performer's body form a musical instrument. The moon becomes an imagined, unstable sonic territory: flashes, clouds, craters and unfamiliar events are translated into shifting sound rather than presented as a literal visual landscape. Tilting, moving and touching an iPod touch can change the way sound emerges, breaks apart, drifts or transforms. Gesture becomes part of composition, shaping transitions and tension during the performance.

The system uses the device's accelerometer and touchscreen, OSC communication and real-time processes in Max/MSP and Csound. Movement data and touch actions enter musical mappings and sound synthesis, including granular processes and timbral transformation. These connections turn the performer, the mobile device and the software into one distributed instrument. First presented in 2010, the work records an early artistic exploration of personal mobile hardware as a means of performing electronic music rather than simply playing recordings from a device.

Source basis: Artist-provided CV; Official artwork documentation. Links: Official work page · Video documentation

15. Music Generation (2018–2021)

Music Generation is a continuing line of experiments concerned with what happens after a machine-learning model generates music. Early studies used recurrent neural networks trained on a selected dataset to produce piano material. Rather than treating the model as a substitute for the composer, the project used its output as material for further composition, visualization and interaction. Generated music moved into real-time 3D scenes, where sound and moving image became parts of a new audiovisual process.

The experiments include an RNN-based piano study, real-time music visualization, The Floating Ball with sine-driven visual movement, an Unreal Engine augmented-reality piano prototype on iOS, and later Transformer-based piano generation in 2021. The different technical stages are grouped deliberately as one evolving project rather than presented as unrelated discoveries. They document how machine-generated material can move between music, image, spatial representation and interactive systems—and how each medium asks a different question of the same musical source.

Source basis: Official artwork documentation. Links: Official project page · Existing video 1 · Existing video 2 · Existing video 3 · Existing video 4

16. Motion & Interfaces (2010–ongoing project line)

Motion & Interfaces gathers a long line of artistic experiments in which the body, mobile devices and custom interfaces become part of sound and image production. In i Touch the Moon, tilting and touching an iPod touch changes the music while it is performed. In Memory of Orchestra, phones become instruments inside a coordinated ensemble. In Light Object, a mobile interface participates in the control of images, sound and physical stage lighting. Across these works, the interface is not simply a way of operating software: it determines which bodily actions can enter the composition and how those actions are understood.

Later software such as LH XYZ developed the same practice into reusable tools. Its iPhone sensors transmit accelerometer and gyroscope data through OSC, while a motion-recognition system can classify tagged gestures as higher-level control signals. Touch-based granular instruments such as LH Grain Pad likewise make the act of touching and moving part of shaping sound. This continuing project line connects performance, mapping, gesture recognition and interface design without collapsing them into a single instrument.

Source basis: Official artwork documentation; Official software/product documentation. Links: Official project page · LH XYZ · LH Grain Pad · Existing video 1 · Existing video 2 · Existing video 3

17. Computational Processes (continuing project line)

Computational Processes documents a continuing investigation into how rules, numerical mappings and software-generated structures can become the material of an artwork. Its experiments do not all share a final visual style. Some begin from environmental input: a photoresistor can change the behavior of a particle field in Unreal Engine 4. Others begin with geometric models and their spatial data. In Triangle Structure / Spatial Field (2025), triangle-based forms are modeled in Blender, exported as transform data in JSON and reconstructed as a real-time field in Unreal Engine 5. A related radial study organizes geometric units through procedural repetition rather than reconstructed source positions.

The wider line also includes real-time C++/OpenFrameworks studies of points, fields, particle movement and multiple visual scenes. Procedural Fields makes part of this computational practice reusable through C++ externals for Max/MSP/Jitter. These projects consider what a rule can generate, how a structure changes under new conditions, and when a technical process becomes an artistic one. The page functions as an evolving record of that work rather than as one completed, single-piece artwork.

Source basis: Official artwork documentation. Links: Official project page · Procedural Fields source repository · Existing video 1 · Existing video 2 · Existing video 3 · Existing video 4 · Existing video 5 · Existing video 6

18. Chance Structures (2020–ongoing project line)

Chance Structures is a series of real-time 3D studies built around the tension between deliberate construction and events that cannot be completely predicted. A system may begin from carefully arranged geometry, positions and rules, yet the results of gravity, falling bodies, collisions and encounters cannot be fixed frame by frame. The work remains concerned with what the artist decides before an event begins and what remains open once that event unfolds.

The documented studies Coincidence and Falling Forms approach this problem through encounter and physical simulation. Repeated objects enter orderly spatial configurations; contact, accumulation and changes in direction create particular outcomes within those constraints. Chance is not used here as a substitute for composition. It acts inside a constructed structure and reveals the difference between specifying a process and prescribing exactly what it will produce. The series makes the boundary between order and contingency visible through moving three-dimensional form.

Source basis: Official artwork documentation. Links: Official project page · Existing video 1 · Existing video 2

19. Orange (2019)

Orange is an early real-time 3D sketch built around a tree-like structure. Rather than treating the form as a finished model, the experiment asks whether an assembled structure might begin to suggest its own behavior and a quality resembling life. Its significance lies in this move from a recognizable geometric body toward something that appears to grow or act. The study preceded and connects conceptually to the later experiments with ambiguous, sound-driven bodies in The CONV, while remaining a small exploratory work in its own right.

Source basis: Official artwork documentation. Links: Official work page · Related series: The CONV · Existing video 1

20. The Inner Landscape (2018)

The Inner Landscape is a composition for piano and cello written in 2018. It began from an image of autumn and the season's distant, clear and reflective atmosphere. The music remains connected to tonal harmony, but its center is repeatedly unsettled. Chromatic turns, brief tonicizations and movement toward more remote harmonic areas create hesitation and suspension; major and minor colors do not settle into a single stable emotional position.

The title refers less to a depicted landscape than to a state of thought. Musical ideas return, move aside and change direction without necessarily reaching an immediate resolution. Across the relationship between piano and cello, the work gives shape to a tension between attachment and distance, and between the wish to approach an image and the difficulty of defining it. The piece belongs to Liu Hao's instrumental composition practice, not to his real-time software or installation output.

Source basis: Official artwork documentation. Links: Official work page

21. Gemini (2017)

Gemini is a piano composition written in 2017. The idea of duality provides its starting point, but not as a static contrast between two clearly separated characters. Instead, musical ideas appear, interrupt one another and return altered. Continuity and hesitation, attraction and withdrawal, and different senses of direction coexist within the piece.

The title is a psychological and structural point of departure rather than a literal musical picture of a zodiac sign. The composition develops an unstable identity through changes of gesture, texture and momentum. Its interest lies in how musical relationships shift over time, and how contrast can remain active without being resolved into a simple opposition.

Source basis: Official artwork documentation. Links: Official work page

22. Dancing in the Galaxy (2017)

Dancing in the Galaxy is a virtual-reality audiovisual experiment made with Unity 3D. Points, lines and geometric bodies are drawn and transformed within a virtual space. Its principal visual concern is continuity: one configuration becomes another through smooth real-time movement rather than a sequence of independent images. The project tests how an audiovisual composition can be experienced as movement within a spatial environment, with the viewer's relation to the geometric field differing from that of a conventional flat screen.

Source basis: Official artwork documentation. Links: Official work page · Existing video 1

23. The Flying Lines (2017)

The Flying Lines is a real-time audiovisual experiment developed with Max for Live and electroacoustic sound. Points, lines and geometric shapes move through continuous transformations, so the image is experienced as an unfolding process rather than a set of finished drawings. The work explores the relationship between a simple graphic vocabulary and temporal change: a line can extend, shift, connect or become a different form while the musical process continues around it. This experiment belongs to the artist's wider study of real-time drawing and audiovisual form.

Source basis: Official artwork documentation. Links: Official work page · Existing video 1

24. Pisces (2016)

Pisces is an orchestral composition written in 2016. Its starting point is a psychological image of heightened sensitivity, inwardness, hesitation and changing emotional states. The music alternates movement and suspension, allowing gestures and textures to emerge and recede without always settling into a conclusive direction.

The title is not a literal depiction of an astrological sign. It serves as a loose frame for an introspective and emotionally unsettled musical character. Rather than drive every idea toward one predetermined climax, the orchestral writing leaves room for uncertainty, fluid transitions and changing intensities of perception. This account concerns the composition's musical character and form, without assigning the work an invented program or narrative.

Source basis: Official artwork documentation. Links: Official work page

25. Postcard of Paris (2016)

Postcard of Paris is a short audiovisual composition combining an original piano piece with a deliberately modest real-time visual scene. The visual environment was developed with Max/MSP and Jitter. Rather than constructing a large generative installation, the work places a composed musical piece alongside a small computational image whose changes unfold in time. Its scale is part of its character: an experiment in the correspondence between piano music and a simple real-time audiovisual setting.

Source basis: Official artwork documentation. Links: Official work page · Video

26. The Red Line (2013)

The Red Line is a compact real-time audiovisual sketch made with Max/MSP and Jitter in 2013. It uses points and lines moving through a changing visual field. The design is deliberately direct: instead of a complex scene or narrative, the experiment works with a restricted geometric vocabulary and the process of drawing it live. It records one early stage of Liu Hao's continuing interest in how simple computational marks can acquire rhythm, movement and spatial organization.

Source basis: Official artwork documentation. Links: Official work page · Existing video 1

27. While the Afternoon Moved (2021)

While the Afternoon Moved is a string quartet that began with a brief musical idea arriving unexpectedly one afternoon. The idea already contained a particular sense of movement, and the work developed by following possibilities within that material rather than imposing an unrelated narrative. Fragments pass among the instrumental voices, pause, overlap and return in changed forms. This redistribution gives the quartet its changing sense of time.

The piece holds onto the trace of a musical intuition before it disappears. Its continuity comes from the transformation of material and the relationships among the four players, not from an external technical system. It reflects a compositional practice attentive to how a small idea can become a complete form through the unfolding of its own internal connections.

Source basis: Official artwork documentation. Links: Official work page

28. Untitled (c. 2003)

Untitled is an early instrumental and electroacoustic composition dating from around 2003, shortly after Liu Hao began studying composition. Written for instruments including piano and violin, it also incorporates sampled water sounds. The piece reflects an early attraction to atonality, timbre and the spatial character of sound, before those interests were fully supported by formal compositional technique.

In the artist's existing account, the important quality of the work is an intuition that preceded technical mastery: a sense of a sonic world he wanted to reach, even while its organization remained uncertain. Later training brought greater command of harmony and structure, but this score preserves a different moment of listening—when the desired sound existed before the methods for realizing it had become established.

Source basis: Official artwork documentation. Links: Official work page

6. Apps and independent software — full integrated descriptions

These descriptions treat software as a product, instrument or creative system according to its actual purpose. They do not assign a philosophical theme to functional tools merely to make them sound like gallery works. XII is cross-referenced to its Works entry, not counted as a second unrelated artwork.

A01. LH Rubbing (iPad; 2013)

LH Rubbing is a polyphonic, analog-style iPad synthesizer whose distinctive design begins with the way the instrument is played. Its Keyboard Rubbing interface translates rubbing gestures across the touch keyboard into vibrato, with the gesture influencing rate and depth. Instead of separating sound design from performance, the app uses the movement of the player's finger as a direct musical control. Its sound aims for a warm, rounded and responsive analog character.

The synthesis system includes three waveform oscillators, a noise source, multi-mode filtering, ADSR modulation and two LFOs, including modulation of one LFO by another. Those components support sustained tones and changing timbres, while touch interaction gives the performer a way to shape expression in real time. First released in 2013, it was Liu Hao's first iOS software synthesizer and received App Store editorial recognition. The app exemplifies how a performance gesture can become the organizing idea behind a software instrument.

Source basis: Artist-provided CV; Official software/product documentation. Links: Official product page · App Store (linked from the official page) · Apple developer listing

Apple App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lh-rubbing/id652348001

A02. XII (iPhone / iPad; initial release 2014)

XII is not a conventional music-production tool with a fixed editing timeline. It is a generative audiovisual artwork delivered as an iPhone/iPad app. The user defines a twelve-tone row, while the software generates other musical dimensions—octaves, durations, velocities, polyphony, tempo, expression and structure—and renders a real-time three-dimensional visual environment animated by the music. Taps can trigger notes, touch gestures rotate the visual field, and the sequence can run forward or in reverse.

The app deliberately gives the user a small amount of direct control while letting the system make many compositional decisions. Wi-Fi MIDI output allows its generated note activity to reach external music software. Each run becomes a new performance rather than the replay of a single fixed audiovisual recording. XII is therefore both a software product and the distributed form of a specific artwork; its artistic context is documented on the corresponding Works page.

Source basis: Artist-provided CV; Official artwork documentation; Official software/product documentation. Links: Product page · Artwork page · App Store

Apple App Store: https://apps.apple.com/pl/app/xii-audiovisual/id905741418

A03. LH Resistor (iOS)

LH Resistor is an iOS synthesizer designed to move between a concentrated single voice and wide, evolving layers of sound without giving up detailed control. Its architecture combines a selectable-waveform FM voice, one to nine unison voices, three simultaneous filter outputs and multiple modulation paths. The player can begin with a relatively direct tone and transform it through changes of harmonic complexity, phase relationships, detuning, filtering and time-dependent modulation.

The FM index can be controlled by an ADSR envelope and LFO, while sub-LFOs vary the rate of other modulation processes. Low-pass, band-pass and high-pass outputs operate in parallel with their own levels and envelopes. Chorus, stereo delay, reverb and preset storage support sound development and recall. The product's distinguishing idea is flexible, layered timbre construction in a standalone instrument, rather than a claim that it replaces an entire music-production environment.

Source basis: Artist-provided CV; Official software/product documentation. Links: Official product page · App Store

A04. LH Grey (iPhone; 2024)

LH Grey is an analog-style iPhone synthesizer built around an intentionally direct signal path. Two oscillators provide the foundation of the sound. Filtering and Unison shape its weight, harmonic density and width; Chorus, Delay and Reverb extend the sound into more spacious textures. The app favors immediate musical control over a large number of nested functions.

It is designed for players who want to move quickly from a compact bass or focused melodic line toward broader, softer and evolving sounds. The interface keeps core synthesis and effects parameters close to hand, making adjustments part of playing rather than a separate technical procedure. Its character comes from the relationship between a simple oscillator foundation, familiar analog-style shaping and direct interaction.

Source basis: Artist-provided CV; Official software/product documentation. Links: Official product page · App Store

A05. LH Tuner (iOS; 2014)

LH Tuner combines precision instrument tuning with a reference-tone generator that treats musical temperament as a practical part of the instrument. Rather than limiting tuning to a single default standard, the app supports Equal Temperament, Pythagorean and Just Intonation systems alongside adjustable reference tones and custom frequency control. Its displays show pitch relationships through cents, frequency and tuning indicators.

The documented precision is ±0.1 cent, with A4 calibration from 430 to 450 Hz. Generated tones can be finely adjusted, and envelope, noise-gate and level controls support repeated practice and instrument setup. The product is intended for musicians who need both everyday tuning and more deliberate exploration of pitch standards. LH Tuner also received App Store editorial recognition; that should remain attributed specifically to the product rather than expanded into an unverified general claim about all of Liu Hao's software.

Source basis: Artist-provided CV; Official software/product documentation. Links: Official product page

Apple App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lh-tuner/id877746374

A06. LH Grain (iPhone; 2013)

LH Grain is a dual-channel granular synthesizer for iPhone built around touch performance. Each channel can generate and shape its own granular texture, giving a performer access to overlapping, unstable and evolving sound material. A touchpad makes changes to the granular process immediate and visible rather than burying them entirely in menus. The app includes control of grain envelopes, pitch and other parameters, and its ten built-in effects extend the resulting textures through filtering, modulation, distortion and space.

OSC sending and receiving allows LH Grain to connect to compatible external systems, placing it within larger live electronic music or interactive setups. Recording and file-sharing features make it possible to preserve material produced during a session. The app carries the artist's earlier interest in direct performance interfaces into a reusable software instrument: granular synthesis remains technically detailed, but the experience of moving and shaping sound by touch is central.

Source basis: Artist-provided CV; Official software/product documentation. Links: Official product page · App Store

A07. LH Grain Pad (iPad; 2013)

LH Grain Pad extends Liu Hao's dual-channel granular synthesis design to the iPad. Its larger touch surface becomes a performance area in which grain density, duration, pitch and related parameters can be manipulated directly. The two channels remain independent, allowing layered textures to develop in parallel. Eight grain amplitude envelopes, built-in samples, sample-location controls and frequency jitter provide more detailed ways to form a sound than a simple sample player.

The app includes ten integrated audio effects, OSC message send/receive and an audio recorder. These features connect immediate touch performance with more complex electronic music and interactive workflows, whether in a studio or in a live system. The instrument is not only a collection of granular parameters: its touch design reflects an interest in making the physical action of the player a meaningful part of sound production.

Source basis: Artist-provided CV; Official software/product documentation. Links: Official product page

Apple App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lh-grain-pad/id926167601

A08. LH XYZ (iPhone; 2013)

LH XYZ turns an iPhone into a wireless movement interface for music, video and other real-time systems. The application transmits accelerometer and gyroscope values as OSC messages so that the orientation and movement of the device can control sound, image or external parameters. Sampling rates of up to 200 Hz make the continuous movement data useful for responsive mapping and analysis.

A later motion-recognition function adds a second level of interaction. Its neural-network Human Activity Recognition system classifies six tagged movement patterns, including directional sweeps, a far-to-near motion, an upright quarter-circle movement, vibration and rest. It can send those predictions as OSC values as well. The result is an instrument for translating bodily action into both continuous signals and recognized events. It develops the interactive methods of Liu Hao's early performance works into software that other musicians and artists can use within their own systems.

Source basis: Artist-provided CV; Official software/product documentation; Official artwork documentation. Links: Official product page · Related project line

Apple App Store: https://apps.apple.com/in/app/lh-xyz/id676800278

A09. TunerMetro (iOS; 2015)

TunerMetro combines two everyday music-practice functions—instrument tuning and tempo control—inside one app. The tuner reports a detected pitch with cent and frequency information, while the metronome provides adjustable beats and tap-tempo estimation. Reference-tone generation and input-level monitoring support use across instruments and practice situations.

The design reduces the interruption between preparing an instrument and rehearsing: musicians can tune and then move directly to a steady pulse without switching tools. Background-audio support extends the app's usefulness during other compatible tasks. Unlike Liu Hao's experimental audiovisual artworks, TunerMetro is a deliberately functional product whose value lies in reliability and the continuity of a common musician's workflow.

Source basis: Artist-provided CV; Official software/product documentation. Links: Official product page

Apple App Store: https://apps.apple.com/ie/app/tuner-and-metronome/id885575354

A10. LH Metronome (iPhone; 2018)

LH Metronome places a functional metronome inside a real-time 3D music room. It retains the practical task of keeping musical time, but gives that task a navigable spatial setting rather than a conventional flat utility interface. Furniture, lighting, materials and a rotatable camera make the room visible as a continuously rendered environment, while the underlying rhythm controls remain simple.

Developed with Unreal Engine, the app supports a tempo range of 32–232 BPM and meters including 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4. It is not presented as a substitute for an audiovisual installation: the metronome remains a practice tool. What distinguishes it is the decision to let an ordinary musical function coexist with the visual language of a small, real-time virtual space.

Source basis: Artist-provided CV; Official software/product documentation. Links: Official product page

Apple App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lh-metronome/id1447048517

A11. AI Style (iPhone; 2019)

AI Style is an iPhone application for neural-network image style transfer. It allows a user to take or select a photograph and reinterpret its visible textures, colors and lines through eleven selectable visual styles. The process is based on a pre-trained machine-learning model rather than a conventional single-color filter, so different presets can create substantially different painterly, graphic or geometric treatments of the same source image.

The app is built for a direct, everyday photo workflow: choose an image, select a style, compare the result and save it. Its documented output retains the original image dimensions. AI Style extends the artist's engagement with computational image-making into a distributable tool, but it should be distinguished from research experiments such as RNN Drawer: the latter developed its own exploratory image-generation process, while AI Style applies a pre-trained style-transfer model to user photographs.

Source basis: Artist-provided CV; Official software/product documentation. Links: Official product page

Apple App Store: https://apps.apple.com/pl/app/ai-style/id1464718890

A12. PulseLoom (Windows desktop; public release 2025)

PulseLoom is a standalone Windows application for organizing OSC control data as a musical and interactive timeline. It is intended for situations in which a sound or visual work needs repeatable changes of parameters over time, but a full digital audio workstation would be unnecessarily large or inappropriate. Users can build control tracks, arrange events and automation-like curves, configure OSC routing for individual destinations and preserve sessions for later rehearsal or development.

The program does not synthesize sound itself. It sends changing control values to compatible receiving systems such as Max, Csound, SuperCollider, TouchDesigner or custom software. MIDI input can participate in the control workflow. In this way PulseLoom turns a recurring need from electronic composition and interactive-system development—managing timed changes across different programs—into a focused independent platform. The documented public release is v0.210 for Windows, dated December 2025; licensing should be read from the repository rather than inferred from its availability.

Source basis: Artist-provided CV; Official software/product documentation. Links: Official product page · GitHub repository

A13. LH Resistor Desktop (desktop software documentation)

The official website provides a separate LH Resistor desktop product page and user manual. This desktop entry belongs to the LH Resistor software family, alongside the separately documented iOS instrument. Its product specifications, supported environments and installation guidance are described in the desktop documentation linked below; these should not be inferred from the iOS version.

Source basis: Official desktop product documentation. Links: Desktop product page · Manual

7. Preferred terminology and attribution

For generated visual work, use terms such as real-time visuals, generative visuals, real-time 3D rendering, rendered visual forms, or visual field. For video-based work, use moving image, video footage, real-time video processing, or audiovisual system. Describe each work with its own actual techniques and artistic premise rather than generic claims.

Creator: Liu Hao / 刘昊 (Hao Liu in some English-language materials). Official source: https://liuhao-art.com/ Catalogue: https://liuhao-art.com/works/works · https://liuhao-art.com/apps/apps Human-facing chronology: https://liuhao-art.com/timeline/timeline