SOUGWEN CHUNG - chimeric circuitry
Artist & Researcher - — drawing alongside robotic systems since 2015
London / New York
A practice of embodied collaboration between human, machine, and environment. MEMORY is in the permanent collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum and is the first AI model acquired by a major cultural institution. Work held by EMMA, Espoo Museum of Modern Art.
Founder of SCILICET, an experimental studio in London.
An index of the practice
[§ 01]
Metamorphic Ecologies
STATEMENT
The work pursues a poetics of symbiosis and rupture; articulating human–machine relation through embodied collaboration and organic computation.
Rather than rehearsing inherited binaries of human versus machine, art versus science, each body of work proposes a dynamic, catalytic interval between agencies. Metamorphosis is treated not as metaphor alone but as method: a way of thinking with systems that change form, redistribute intention, and generate new conditions of emergence across bodies, tools, and environments.
I — COASTHETICS SYSTEMS
Drawing Operations
A decade-long inquiry into the aesthetics of symbiosis: seven generations of the D.O.U.G. system, from robotic mimicry to neural memory to biofeedback.
[ 2015 — ONGOING ]
II — EMBODIED DATA
Body Machine (Meridians)
Machines as extensions of living systems; tracing gesture sculpted in air, spatial drawing as architecture across forest, glacial, and desert biomes.
[ 2015 — ONGOING ]
III — RITUAL & PRESENCE
Performance
Live meditations with machine collaborators; EEG biofeedback, sonified gesture, and shared ritual as instruments of collective time.
[ 2015 — ONGOING ]
V — ORGANIC COMPUTATION
Current Research
Silk circuitry, interspecies collaboration, and computation reimagined as living matter. New work toward a project with a major museum, 2027.
[ 2015 — ONGOING ]
[§ 02]
Selected Works
[§ 01]
RECURSIONS
To pass forward in sequence; to circle back through movement.
A monumental scroll painted with two robotic arms linked to the artist's body through live EEG; two chemically incompatible inks holding human and machine authorship in a single stroke.
Solo presentation — Fellowship × ARTXCODE, Art Basel Hong Kong, 2026
[ IV · 2020 — ]
Spectrality
Can accidents be tamed through circuits?
Alpha-state brainwave data rematerialized as robotic movement. Premiered in performance at the World Economic Forum, Davos, 2025.
Solo presentation — Fellowship × ARTXCODE, Art Basel Hong Kong, 2026
[§ 03]
Seven Generations
Earlier generations are never fully archived — four remain in active operation.
[§ 04]
Research
2025 - 2027
What if computation were grown rather than fabricated; sensitive, porous, and situated?
The studio raises Bombyx mori in residence, drawing silk fibroin from the cocoon as a substrate for biodegradable circuitry; a research stream titled Chimeric Circuitry. Alongside it, a new operating system for the relationship between human, machine, and living collaborator is in development: a rewilding of the machine, forthcoming as a project with a major museum in 2027.
Operational Art
drawing alongside robotic systems since 2015
Sougwen Chung — Drawing Operations Unit: Generational Timeline
Seven generations of investigation, 2014 to present. Earlier generations are never fully archived — four remain in active operation.
Duration & Overlap
[§ 05]
Collections
VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM, LONDON — ACQUIRED 2022
The first AI model acquired by a major cultural institution.
The acquisition comprises a fine-art print, a process film, and the trained recurrent neural network itself, housed in a 3D-printed sculpture; the first artefact of its kind to be acquired by a cultural institution. Currently on view in Why We Make at V&A East, London, through 2026. CAP MEMORY (Drawing Operations Unit: Generation_2), 2017
EMMA — ESPOO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, FINLAND
Assembly Lines film; produced with and acquired by the museum.
The multi-robotic performative installation (D.O.U.G._5) was produced for In Search of the Present with the Saastamoinen Foundation and entered the permanent collection as a complete coaesthetic system: robotics, biofeedback, sound, and the paintings it produced.
[§ 06]
Now
“To make a machine collaborator, I’ve had to become machine-readable. It’s a paradox.”[ The Art Newspaper, 2026 ]
“One of the most transformative lessons I’ve learned is to poeticize error… the failures themselves can be generative.”[ MIT Technology Review, 2025 ]
“Categories are permeable and porous. ‘Human’, ‘machine’, ‘intelligence’ — all of these are not fixed points but ideas to be reinvented.”[ The Art Newspaper, 2025 ]
[§ 07]
Lexicon
THE VOCABULARY OF THE WORK (ONGOING, IN PROGRESS)
Drawing and painting alongside robotic systems; a framework for the protocols, ethics, and conditions of co-creation between human, machine, and environment.
A configuration in which human, machine, and environment are charged with generating open choreographies of sensing and meaning — the system, not the artefact, is the work.
A way of thinking with systems that change form, redistribute intention, and generate new conditions of emergence across bodies, tools, and environments.
To pass forward in sequence; to circle back through movement. A structure at once computational and genealogical.
Zhong Yao's calligraphic pause — pressure held before the stroke continues or redirects — operationalized as the EEG threshold at which the robotic system decides to act or to wait.
The white space that gives the stroke its weight. In the work — and on this page — negative space is treated as a material.
[§ 08]
From the Studio
THE PULSE
figures is a running feed of studio notations; process fragments, material tests, field notes ported from the studio's feeds. Sometimes serious, sometimes random, public (for now).
THE ARTIST
Sougwen 愫君 Chung is a Chinese-Canadian artist and researcher, widely regarded as a pioneer of human–machine collaboration.
Chung's multidisciplinary practice spans installation, drawing, performance, and sculpture in dialogue with robotics, machine learning, and bio-sensing. Through these interwoven forms, they investigate the shifting relationship between the mark made by hand and the mark made by machine. Each body of work proposes a coaesthetic system: a configuration in which artist, machine, and environment co-produce open choreographies of perception and meaning.
© 2026 Sougwen Chung / SCILICET.
𝘖𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘈𝘳𝘵
drawing alongside robotic systems since 2015
For acquisition, commissioning, & press: office@scilicet.xyz ⇢
© 2025 Sougwen Chung / SCILICET.
embodied collaboration; metamorphic ecologies.
For press and collaborations: ⇢office@scilicet.xyz