Created during the pandemic, HEAT EXCHANGE is a concept brand film that explores how fashion, digital bodies, and speculative worlds can serve as tools for healing, self-acceptance, and connection. Functioning as both the 3D Artist and Director, the project involved developing the visual world of O-O-O-O—a phantasmagoric universe where physical limitation, transformation, and emotional vulnerability are reframed as sources of strength.
The narrative blends elements of animism, Taoist philosophy, and ritual symbolism with contemporary digital culture to construct an environment where the boundaries between body, garment, and identity dissolve. Accessories are presented as wearable talismans: protective objects designed for psychological resilience rather than mere ornamentation. Through the use of surreal creatures, hybrid landscapes, and symbolic anatomy, the work reflects on isolation, trauma, and post-human identity in an era defined by virtual presence.
Originally presented as part of the 1st Annual Metaverse Exhibition “gEnki” at Spazio Thetis, Venice (2022), HEAT EXCHANGE continues as an ongoing design and research project at the intersection of fashion, digital art, and speculative world-building.
In a world that champions reason, symmetry, evolution and perfection, there lies a phantasmagoric world — O-O-O-O, the world of “the crip”. The crips refuse to be tamed and typecasted into a neat naming system that subjugates intricate life into simple codes. The crips constantly reinvent themselves to create malleable perception of time and space. The world is called “O-O-O-O” because it defies the tyranny of language and reads as a pictograph. “O-O-O-O” transcends OOO (object-oriented-ontology) in that it embodies animism, which believes in the spiritual manifestation of all creatures. The fourth “O” stems from the transliteration of Runic letter ᛟ, referring to the gift for divine possession. “O-O-O-O” is a perfect inversion of the realistic world we inhabit. Pain is the entry ticket to the “O-O-O-O” world, only that pain is turned to pleasure once you enter.
O-O-O-O works like a sandbox game, in that it is eclectic and ever-emerging. Different mythologies across cultural and historical boundaries (Taoist tale, Bulgarian traditional rituals, Tibetan masks, etc.) fuse together to create a fantastical world with exquisite strangeness — a Chinese-landscape-painting-like valley, on which Hieronymus Bosch and Shan Hai Jing (山海经) inspired creatures channeling and connecting with each other.
To enter the O-O-O-O, HEAT EXCHANGE has started a design label in the form of accessories. They work like wearable talisman, the arms and armors of our body and mind. Taking inspiration from Taoist philosophy of which “Qi” (roughly translated as “energy”) is the root of all, HEAT EXCHANGE prioritizes the protection of knees, as they are one of the key portals of human energy system. The idea of making knee protectors was also born out of a practical need, as knee injuries can often turn into irreversible physical damage. Meanwhile, to wear a knee protector outside without shame of being asked or viewed as unwell is a first statement for crips. HEAT EXCHANGE’s first collection introduces a combination of furry fabric and fine metallic materials, reflecting the aura and the backbone of O-O-O-O creatures, to radiate warmness and sturdiness in an accessible beauty, a crip pheromone.
