Shanshan Zhang

Biography

Shanshan Zhang is a London-based transdisciplinary artist and doctoral researcher at the University of the Arts London (UAL). Her practice operates at the intersection of choreography, embodied cognition, and emerging technologies, examining how digital mediation reshapes the aesthetic, sensory, and philosophical dimensions of movement.

She is currently developing Boundfusion, an emerging research framework that reconceptualises immersion in performance as a relational process rather than a purely sensory effect. Through this framework, she investigates how ambiguity and misalignment between virtual and physical environments can intensify collective engagement, embodied perception, and participatory presence.

Zhang’s technical and scholarly contributions have received international recognition. Her research on multisensory virtual reality — particularly aero-haptic and thermal feedback systems — is featured at the 2026 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VRW). Alongside her technological research, she serves as lead researcher on an intercultural project sponsored by the Ministry of Culture of Saudi Arabia, exploring how legends and cultural memory can be activated through participatory artistic practices. She is also the lead researcher of Struggle of Seeds: Robotic Photography as a Performative Agent, a project selected for the Posters Program at SIGGRAPH 2026 in Los Angeles.

With professional experience that includes contributing to the direction of the opening and closing ceremonies of the 14th National Games of China (2021), Zhang bridges large-scale public spectacle with intimate, technology-driven performance. Her work challenges conventional boundaries between body and system, virtual and physical space, and cultural identity and collective experience.