Study 21, 2023
Work on canvas
36 x 70 cm
Sougwen Chung's Study series shares process artefacts from her collaborative research with the 4th generation of her Drawing Operations project – focused on biofeedback and digitized drawing memory. The work was created alongside the D.O.U.G._4 system, which Chung designed to better understand the possibilities of enacting robotic movement with my own biosignals. The system works through a camera attached to the end of the robotic arm, which relays the position of her own hand as data. As Chung make marks on canvas, D.O.U.G._4 responds to her based on real-time interpretations of her brainwaves, to which she then respond. This deceptively simple process creates a feedback loop of overlapping paint strokes, resulting in a visual outcome. It is a painting study and a research artefact, part of an ongoing speculation about alternative configurations of human and machine interaction as collaborative art.
ABOUT Sougwen Chung
Multidisciplinary artist Sougwen 愫君 Chung combines hand-drawn and computer-generated marks to address the proximity of human-machine collaboration. Their speculative critical practice spans installation, sculpture, still image, drawing, and performance, exploring the mark-made-by-hand and the mark-made-by-machine as an approach to understanding the dynamics of humans and systems. Chinese-Canadian Chung is a former researcher at MIT Media Lab, Artist in Residence at Bell Labs and New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, and founder and artistic director of Scilicet, a London-based studio exploring human & non-human collaboration. Chung received the Lumen Prize for Art in Technology, and the work has been collected by institutions such as the Victoria & Albert Museum. The artist has been featured in numerous exhibitions at museums and galleries around the world such as: the Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Espoo; Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver; Art Basel, Miami; National Art Center, Tokyo; NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC], Tokyo, Japan; ArtScience Museum, Singapore; MIT Media Lab, Cambridge; The Drawing Center, New York; The New Museum, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Geneva; Mana Contemporary, New York, Tribeca Film Festival, New York; The Hospital Club, London; Mutek Festival, Tokyo, Montreal & Mexico City; Sonar Festival, Barcelona.