Po-Yao Wu's research investigates how computational systems shape experience at emotional, perceptual, and symbolic levels. Growing up in Taiwan’s high-velocity semiconductor culture, Wu came to understand technology not only as machinery but as an affective atmosphere—one that subtly reorganizes how bodies feel, attend, and make meaning. This recognition guides Wu's central question: How might we design AI systems that deepen awareness rather than accelerate fragmentation?
Wu calls this orientation Reflective Intelligence—a paradigm of human–AI interaction that prioritizes attunement over optimization, symbolic resonance over prediction, and relational clarity over behavioral steering.
Techno-Trauma
Affective Technological Ecology
Reflective Intelligence
Emotional Coherence
AI–HCI as Self-Awareness Mirror
Understanding computational systems as material--affective ecologies: they operate through us, reconfiguring culture, emotion, and meaning from within.
Mapping the sensory patterns of algorithmic rhythms and how they shape attention, imagination, and daily experience.
Designing reflective AI systems that function as partners in emotional grounding, symbolic insight, and relational attunement.
Po-Yao Wu is a cross-disciplinary artist–engineer examining how computational systems shape perception and produce subtle forms of techno-trauma. Drawing from Taiwan’s semiconductor culture, her exhibited works—ranging from AI imagery to critical AI-VR cityspaces and reflective interfaces—investigate how digital infrastructures fragment or reorganize inner experience. She approaches AI not as an oracle but as a relational mirror, developing reflective technologies that expose algorithmic pressures while restoring self-awareness and emotional clarity.
Media Art
Cross-Disciplinary Practice
Critical Design
Tech-Ritual Systems
r3a2t10@gapp.nthu.edu.tw