As part of the 2025 Tsinghua University Art Museum Art and Technology Week series, The garden of forking paths takes as its point of departure the intertextual relationships between art, science, and humanity. The exhibition examines how multiple systems of knowledge unfold in parallel, intersecting at the deeper strata of civilization and revealing shared structures of thought, imagination, and inquiry across disciplines.

Running in dialogue with this exploration, The mirror world: machines, algorithms, and aura emerges from artists’ experimental engagements with technology and its generative capacities. The exhibition questions where the spirit of art resides in an era increasingly shaped by algorithms, artificial intelligence, and machinic perception, while also considering how artistic aura may be transformed—or redefined—within these evolving conditions.

Together, these exhibitions propose a speculative landscape in which artistic practice becomes a tool for reflection and foresight. Within this blossoming “garden,” visitors are invited to contemplate alternative pathways for the future, collectively seeking new directions for the advancement of human civilization at the intersection of creativity, technology, and human values.