A Walled City: An Interactive AI Artwork for Decentralized Urban Memories and Collective Presence
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: A Walled City is an interactive AI art installation that constructs a decentralized virtual city in real time, grounded in the visual memories contributed by its participants. Conceptually inspired by the Kowloon Walled City—a hyper-dense, self-organized urban enclave that once existed in Hong Kong—the project adopts its spatial logic, urban morphology, and visual aesthetics as the foundation for co-creating decentralized virtual settlement with AI. Participants engage by uploading personal images of their visual memories, which are interpreted by a customized multi-agent AI system and transformed into unique architectural chambers. Each chamber acts as both a vessel of artificial memory and a node in a networked, continuously evolving cityscape. This paper presents the conceptual framework, intelligent system design, and experimental visualization of A Walled City , revisiting how communities historically formed in decentralized contexts and proposing a novel multi-agent AI system that weaves personal memory fragments into a non-hierarchical shared cyberspace.
DOI: 10.1145/3816084
Authors: Weidi Zhang, Lijiaozi Cheng, Yi Wang, Jieliang Luo
Institutions: Arizona State University, University of Sheffield
Language: English
Topic: Art, Technology, and Culture
Subfield: Visual Arts and Performing Arts
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7166590226