55 Nanxin Street is an interactive digital art project that employs parametric engines to transform the abstract concept of "authenticity" into a visualized dynamic interplay. Through real-time audience control over population, architecture, and environmental proportions, the work explores the transformation of urban spatial attributes and the loss of collective identity. It constructs a virtual theater where memory, power, and technology collide, revealing the complex fate of "authenticity" in urbanization—it is both dismantled by capitalist logic and reimagined through digital experimentation.

Inspired by the old city center of Jinan, the project focuses on the replacement of traditional architectural communities with modern commercial spaces, exposing the erosion of urban authenticity and its impact on the cultural belonging of indigenous residents. Urbanization is not merely a physical transformation but a reconstruction of power structures and cultural narratives. In this process, indigenous residents are displaced from the subjective "first space" to the scrutinized "third space," their cultural memories and group identities gradually marginalized.

55 Nanxin Street, where the artist was born and raised, is a pre-liberation single-story house with traditional wooden rafters, square pillars, gray tiles, and a courtyard shaded by tall trees. It documents the transformation of Jinan’s old city center, presenting a microcosm of urban evolution: traditional spaces replaced by parking lots, luxury stores, and high-priced bars; century-old lamb soup restaurants and local snack streets vanishing due to rising rents and commercial development. Indigenous residents are forced to relocate, and the authenticity and cultural memories of the community are erased. This process is not unique to Jinan but is a global phenomenon.

The project also examines the loss of the "authentic self" in spatial transformation—not only individual memories but also the cultural identity of broader groups. It traces the rupture from the industrial-era proletariat to the post-industrial "middle class," questioning the sense of belonging and identity in the face of modernization.