In How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Kate Hudson plays a witty, flirtatious journalist working on a semi-anthropological piece. She must test every tactic that would drive a man away in just ten days. The most memorable one—at least on my account—is the Love Fern, a symbol of their fictitious, ever-growing love, but also a veritable mirror of its surroundings, reflecting the care and devotion or the neglect that leads it to its ultimate demise.
That was exactly the first thought that came to mind when I began to learn about Yutian Hu (YUNA 阿尘), a London-based Chinese musician and artist, who has her own Fern, capable of responding to the space, movements and condition of the performance, producing new variations every time—a musical magnifying glass, we could call it. A formidable instrument through which the artist translates moments of deep emotional intensity in real time.
But let’s start from the beginning: what exactly is Fern? And if you’re imagining the plants by the green, long leaves, you would be wrong this time. Fern is a self-developed mobile phone instrument, created by Yutian Hu to experiment with different acoustic experiences, using a microphone and a software called Mobmuplat. What Fern and its herbaceous namesake have in common is that they are ever different and full of intricate meanings.
Characters, objects and even entire worlds are spun out by her innovative relationship with technology, whose purpose is not the pursuit of advancement or a display of digital virtuosity, but rather an artistic and musical exploration which searches for the connection between movement, expression, and the online world. A great example would be YUNA‘s project, YardYard, which allows the physical spaces and digital planes of reality to blend one into the other.
Yutian Hu’s entire craft is about improvisation and living a real experience, as nothing is set in motion by a button or activated by an automation in the real world, and this emotional rawness, once entered into the virtual realm, is used in her performances to create new life forms of intimacy and vulnerability. From improvised instruments to those she has created herself—far removed from computer workstations and made portable—through which she explores the relationship we all entertain with technological consumption.
The real question is, what does Fern do? In a series of Yutian Hu’s live performances, Mudslide Coma, a time-driven playback was introduced, without controlling its outcome and allowing it to freely develop with the surroundings. And in the Just A Real Girl performance, she used it to bring together meaningful fragments of the films she watched for the screening event You Watched Me Cry and You Left, curated by Xinyu XuXX, expressing her own interpretation.
Aside from moments of emotional depth, Fern can also be used as an outlet for repressed feelings, anger and frustration, like in Fone Crane, where the experimental sound accompanies an endurance performance. The artist herself is half suspended towards the floor, with her head on a pillow while lying on a mirror reflecting the light of a smartphone, exploring the limits of her own body and, in the end, the helplessness and resignation that lead it to succumb to its fallibility.
In 2025, the artist formed an audiovisual duo, Duoduo Is Shine, with the multimedia visual artist Tongktongktong, with whom she created Snake run, a live audiovisual performance that transforms the classic endless runner game into a metaphysical and spiritual journey, following a serpent avatar through four symbolic realms: Heaven, Earth, Hell, and reborn Heaven. Merging YUNA’s dynamic sound, generated by using an umbrella attached to a smartphone to manipulate audio distortion, and real-time 3D visuals brought to life by Tongktongktong. A quasi-dantesque epic, in search of a spiritual awakening that can be brought upon only after a transformative experience.
Worlds Rainbow, a track from the compilation Snake Run REBORN, was also used in her group exhibition at SET in London, called Cursed Kitchen, where she showcased againandagainandagainandagain, an interactive iPhone-based music project with visual contributions by artist Dome, all set in a run-down kitchen. The artist decided to create a 3D scan of the kitchen, so that the memory of her work can keep on living beyond its physical state, almost a poetic summary of her multimedia craft.
