In Werner Herzog’s Lo and Behold, internet pioneer Ted Nelson recalls skimming his fingers across a lake as a child, watching ripples form, break apart, and rejoin — a fleeting vision of the universe as an ever-shifting web. Artist Tan Mu knows this sensation intimately. Raised in Yantai, Shandong, she grew up in and around the water — swimming, sailing, windsurfing – before discovering freediving in 2019. At 10 metres below, she achieves neutral buoyancy: light refracted above, infinite darkness below, silence all around. In that space, time and scale dissolve, and perception shifts.
This intimacy with the ocean led her to the hidden systems that run through it: submarine fiber-optic cables, the fragile yet vital infrastructure that carries the world’s information. The 2022 Tonga eruption, which severed a key cable, sparked her Signal series — oil paintings that reimagine these networks as “digital constellations,” fusing planetary systems with human histories, microstructures with global scale.
Following its debut at Art Basel Miami Beach 2024, Signal now arrives at BEK Forum (Büro für experimentelle Kunst) in Vienna, Austria. Five major works anchor the show, alongside an artist talk, a new publication, and Everything on the Line – a musical performance by harpist Sophie Steiner that interprets Mu’s cable maps as graphic notation.
We sat down with the artist to talk about her deep-sea inspirations, the poetics of technology, and how the unseen infrastructures beneath our oceans shape the way we live, connect, and remember.
YS: You grew up by the sea and have deepened your connection with the ocean in recent years through freediving. How has this experience impacted your life?
TM: The film The Big Blue captures my current state of mind. After immersing myself in the ocean, being on land now feels like a temporary interlude. When I dive in different locations, the language and food onshore vary, but underwater, my experience remains consistent—it always feels like coming home.
A freediving session typically lasts about two minutes. Though brief, it encompasses a profound transformation of both body and mind—like a journey from birth to death. The deep sea can evoke fear, triggering a primal need for air. At depths beyond 30 meters, my body enters a state of hypoxia, yet I must summon the strength to ascend. Every movement consumes oxygen, so I have to focus on breath control and mental discipline. This process forces me to confront fear, remain curious, explore, and connect with my surroundings and myself.
YS: You mentioned that freediving gives you a completely new perspective. How does this connect to your art?
TM: In December, I dived near Curaçao, a Caribbean island north of South America. The dive site was an entry point for a submarine fiber-optic cable, located right beside a massive oil rig. I even swam beneath one of its pillars. When I surfaced, the oil rig was just metres behind me. We often think of these structures as artificial monstrosities, yet below the surface, they become marine habitats, like giant castles for sea life.
I’m fascinated by the relationship between artificial structures and nature. Every island has its own cable landing point, including the one connecting my hometown, Yantai, to Dalian. While their existence is public knowledge, their exact locations remain classified. Whenever I visit these areas, I document the ocean’s surface, record the sounds of waves, and collect other data.
YS: You mentioned that freediving gives you a completely new perspective. How does this connect to your art?
TM: In December, I dived near Curaçao, a Caribbean island north of South America. The dive site was an entry point for a submarine fiber-optic cable, located right beside a massive oil rig. I even swam beneath one of its pillars. When I surfaced, the oil rig was just metres behind me. We often think of these structures as artificial monstrosities, yet below the surface, they become marine habitats, like giant castles for sea life.
I’m fascinated by the relationship between artificial structures and nature. Every island has its own cable landing point, including the one connecting my hometown, Yantai, to Dalian. While their existence is public knowledge, their exact locations remain classified. Whenever I visit these areas, I document the ocean’s surface, record the sounds of waves, and collect other data.
YS: So, exploring the ocean is also helping you rediscover the world?
TM: Yes, but more than that, the ocean has reshaped my relationship with my inner self. Freediving is no longer just a hobby — it’s a way of understanding what truly matters to me. When you’re surrounded by the vast expanse of the sea, stripped of everything external, you realise that, like fish, we too can become one with the ocean.
YS: You’ve been painting since childhood. After graduating from the high school affiliated with the Central Academy of Fine Arts, you studied Expanded Media in the U.S., experimenting with various mediums. Yet, why do you still choose painting as your primary medium?
TM: At university, I explored a range of mediums — coding, interactive installations, mechanical structures, sound. I used technology to understand the logic behind things. My approach is almost robotic — receiving and transmitting signals, aided by sensors and systems. In a sense, I’ve always been pursuing dimensions beyond the canvas. Traditional painters rely on their eyes to observe, but so much of the world operates beyond the visible. The universe itself functions like a precision instrument, and I’m fascinated by the hidden structures and unseen forces at play. With my multimedia works, viewers often focus on the mechanics — why something moves, how sound is generated — getting drawn into the technology. But what I care about most is conveying my emotions. That’s why I’ve chosen to distill everything into the controlled space of a painting. It’s a purer state, like being in the ocean, free from excessive sensory distractions such as flashing lights and sound.
YS: Why do you choose to document technology rather than use it as a medium for creation?
TM: Rather than focusing on ever-changing technological tools, I’m more interested in their progress, their intended purposes, the problems they aim to solve, and the underlying principles that drive them. “Technology” is an expansive concept — it often takes decades after an invention for us to fully grasp its impact.
YS: In your Signal series, how do you choose which oceanic regions to depict?
TM: My goal is to map out the entire global submarine cable network. The first painting in the series focuses on the Northwest Pacific, beginning with my hometown, Yantai. It traces the cable connecting Yantai and Dalian, moves through China’s East Sea, and extends toward South Korea. This piece took me almost a year to complete. On one hand, it was an experiment in technique — how to depict connection points, how to render different shades of blue. On the other, it helped me clarify my thoughts. Just like the questions my work raises, it asks how to see information as a vessel for individual narratives. Every story adds to a growing conceptual archive, into which we continuously deposit experiences and extract meaning. From a distance, the paintings resemble a starry sky, reminiscent of explorers during the Age of Discovery who used the stars for navigation. Up close, layers of blue and countless tiny dots shift in color depending on the angle of view. The underpainting is created spontaneously, but when painting specific areas, I overlay another layer to reflect the underwater terrain before mapping the cable routes. The access points are built up with thick, wax-heavy oil paint, resembling the soldered connections of electronic circuits. Each connection point has a raised texture. If Earth is our motherboard, then submarine cables are the logic circuits linking global supercities. Through them, human knowledge and emotions flow, driving innovation. As a civilisation, we have yet to break free from our home planet, but even in space exploration, we still rely on constellations and celestial bodies for guidance. In this way, visual art exists to capture and document this ineffable sense of collective connection.
Science is essentially a form of inference, built upon existing perspectives to derive and construct hypotheses. Our current understanding of the universe is confined to what we call the “observable universe,” limited by the speed of light—meaning we can only see objects whose light has had enough time to reach us. But how accurate is this perception? We have no way of knowing.
See Tan Mu’s ‘Signal’ at BEK Forum, Vienna, 5 September – 15 November 2025. With the musical performance ‘Everything on the Line’, 2 September.
