Sougwen Chung Explained

Sougwen Chung (鍾愫君)
Birth Place:Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Occupation:Artist

Sougwen Chung (鍾愫君) is a Canadian-born, Chinese-raised artist residing in London.[1] Chung's artistic practices are based on performance, drawing, still image, sculpture, and installation.[2] Chung's work investigates mark-made-by-machine and mark-made-by-hand for understanding the encounter of computers and humans.[3]

Early life

Chung grew up in Toronto, Canada, and Hong Kong. Their father, an opera singer, made sure that his children had experience with musical instruments at a very young age, and Chung grew up playing violin and piano. Sougwen Chung moved to the United States as a teenager and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Indiana University Bloomington before obtaining a Masters Diploma in Interactive Art from Hyper Island in Sweden.[4]

Career

Chung's work has been shown at galleries and museums across the world, including EMMA in Espoo, Finland, MAMCO in Geneva, Switzerland, Vancouver Art Gallery in Canada, and Istanbul's Akbank Sanat.[5] Chung has spoken globally at conferences including Tribeca Film Festival, New York; The Hospital Club, London; MUTEK Festival, Montreal & Mexico City; Sónar +D, Barcelona; The Art Directors Club, New York; Stockholm; SXSW, Austin; Tokyo; Internet Dargana, Barcelona: FITC; New York; OFFF, Barcelona; Gray Area Festival, San Francisco; and SIGGRAPH, Vancouver.[6] [7] [8]

Sougwen Chung's work has also been featured in multiple international press outlets including The New Yorker, Art F City, Artnet, Artsy, Dazed and Confused, The Creators Project, MASHABLE, EXIT Magazine, Engadget, Business Insider, Fast Company and USA Today.[9] [10]

An example of their work is the 2017 "Drawing Operations Unit." It is an exploration into how machine learning might be applied to the drawing style of the artist's hand. The robotic arm's behavior is generated from neural nets trained on the artist's drawing gestures.[11] In a sense, the robotic arm has learned from the visual style of the artist's previous drawings and outputs a machine interpretation during the human/robot drawing duet.[12]

Chung is a former researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab and an inaugural member of NEW INC, the first museum-led technology and art in collaboration with The New Museum. According to the World Science Festival 2018, they are an Artist-In-Residence at Bell Labs exploring new forms of drawing in virtual reality, with biometrics, machine learning, and robotics.[13]

In 2019 Chung presented a talk at TED@BCG Mumbai titled "Why I draw with robots".[14]

In 2022, Chung's work MEMORY (Drawing Operations Unit Generation 2) was acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The acquisition of MEMORY comprises a fine art print, a film documenting the artist's process, and a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) model contained within a 3D printed sculpture.[15]

In 2023, as part of Bulgari's 'Serpenti: 75 Years of Infinite Tales exhibition in Milan, Chung showcased LIFE / LINES, a multimedia sculpture crafted from real-time motion-capture data and rendered in large-scale 3D printed chrome, evoking the appearance of liquid mercury.

On December 7, 2023, Chung contributed a guest essay titled "Where Does A.I. End and We Begin?" for The New York Times.[16]

In 2024, Chung was honored with the TIME 100 AI designation, acknowledging their substantial contributions to the field.[17] Additionally, they were awarded the TIME 100 Impact Award, further affirming their significant contributions to the intersection of art and technology.[18]

Selected works

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Marletta. Donata. Organic Form and Digital Visions. An Interview with Sougwen Chung. Digicult. 23 July 2013 . 26 March 2017.
  2. Web site: Noergaard. Ulrik. Sougwen Chung. Dazed. 30 June 2011 . 26 March 2017.
  3. Web site: Sougwen Chung. FITC. 4 March 2017.
  4. Web site: Shin. Nara. Charged: Sougwen Chung. Cool Hunting. 11 April 2014 . 4 March 2017.
  5. Web site: NonSpaces . Akbank Sanat. en. 2019-11-18.
  6. Web site: TFI Interactive. Tribeca Film Institute. en. 2019-11-18.
  7. Web site: Sougwen Chung. The Gray Area Festival. en-US. 2019-11-18.
  8. Web site: Schedule . SXSW Schedule 2014. 2019-11-18.
  9. Web site: Sougwen Chung. Dazed. 2011-06-30. Dazed. en. 2019-11-18.
  10. Web site: This robotic arm draws almost as well as a human artist — because it sort of is one. Saini. Shivam. Business Insider. 2019-11-18.
  11. Web site: Sougwen Chung – Artist Profile (Photos, Videos, Exhibitions). AIArtists.org. en-US. 2019-11-18.
  12. Web site: Sougwen Chung – Art Gallery. nips4creativity.com. en. 2018-03-04.
  13. News: Sougwen Chung . en-US . World Science Festival . 2018-03-04.
  14. Web site: Why I draw with robots . TED Conferences, LLC . 25 November 2019 . 2 October 2021.
  15. Web site: 2022-12-14 . The Algorithmic Gesture: Sougwen Chung's MEMORY • V&A Blog . 2023-01-06 . V&A Blog . en-US.
  16. News: Chung . Sougwen . 2023-12-07 . Where Does A.I. End and We Begin? . 2024-02-26 . The New York Times . en-US . 0362-4331.
  17. Web site: 2023-09-07 . TIME100 AI 2023: Sougwen Chung . 2024-02-26 . Time . en.
  18. Web site: 2024-02-11 . Sougwen Chung Brings Together Art and AI . 2024-02-26 . Time . en.
  19. Web site: Drawing Operations (2015) – Sougwen Chung (愫君) . 2023-01-06 . en-US.
  20. Web site: sougwen. Sougwen. 4 March 2018.
  21. Web site: Drawing Operations (2017) – Sougwen Chung (愫君) . 2023-01-06 . en-US.
  22. Web site: Omnia per Omnia (2018) – Sougwen Chung (愫君) . 2023-01-10 . en-US.
  23. Web site: Exquisite Corpus (2019) – Sougwen Chung (愫君) . 2023-01-10 . en-US.
  24. Web site: F.R.A.N. Flora Rearing Agricultural Network (2020) – Sougwen Chung (愫君) . 2023-01-10 . en-US.
  25. Web site: Assembly Lines (2022) – Sougwen Chung (愫君) . 2023-01-10 . en-US.

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