Rings … through rings II: frictional historiography and robotic misremembrance
Tak-Cheung Hui, Xiaoqiao Li · International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media · 2026
Rings … Through Rings II is a performance research system that engages the historical erasure of Hong Kong’s military cartographies through robotic drawing, laser-engraved discs, and AI-mediated sound. Central to the project is the concept of frictional historiography: a posthuman methodology that approaches memory through misalignment, material resistance, and machinic failure. Instead of following representational models of digital heritage, the work uses noise, drift, and breakdown as compositional tools. In this recursive ecology, comprising robotic plotters, laser-engraved discs, and AI synthesis, memory is not retrieved but enacted through instability. By integrating Somax2 and RAVE with material feedback loops, the system treats servo lag and stylus drag as generative constraints. Failure and sonic hallucination function as epistemic strategies, transforming the archive into a volatile, performative terrain. The project contributes to posthuman performance, machine listening, and experimental media archaeology by advancing misremembrance as a method for engaging with histories shaped by loss, erasure, and uncertainty.