Selected Works
by Sougwen Chung

BIOGRAPHY

SELECTED WORKS

BIOGRAPHY

Sougwen Chung is an internationally renowned artist and researcher exploring the boundaries of collaboration between human and machine.

Chung's work investigates the interactions between mark-made-by-hand and the mark- made-by-machine as an approach to understanding the dynamics of humans and systems.

A former research fellow at MIT, Chung is a pioneer of human and machine collaboration. There, she programmed and built robots named D.O.U.G. (Drawing Operations Unit Generation_X).

These machines mimic the artist’s hand-drawn gestures and synchronously draw along with her. The custom robots make marks in a feedback loop with the artist, generating sketches based on neural nets trained on Sougwen’s drawings gestures and biometrics.

Chung's work treats ‘AI’ as a space of, and for, doubt and uncertainty rather than narrowly defined ends, creating works that address separation, merging, and how we inhabit the relations between human, machine and non-human others.

PROJECT

Wave Studies

"Every act of mark-making constructs a form to inhabit, a space of rememberance, a document of time / place / state. Gestures suspended, layered, extruding from a single plane. A simultenaity of here and nowhere."

MIXED MEDIA

Untitled 1

2021, Biofeedback Paintings
Assembly Line Series

INQUIRE

MIXED MEDIA

Untitled 2

2021, Biofeedback Paintings
Assembly Line Series

INQUIRE

MIXED MEDIA

Untitled 3

2021, Biofeedback Paintings
Assembly Line Series

INQUIRE

MIXED MEDIA

INQUIRE

PROJECT

Hylomorphism II Series

MIXED MEDIA

Untitled

Hylomorphism Studies
100cm x 64cm
2021

MIXED MEDIA

Untitled

Hylomorphism Studies
120cm x 90cm
2021

PROJECT

Gestures of Becoming-With

feat. Drawing Operations (robotic) Unit, Generation 4, Isloation Drawings created during quarantine lockdown

" At Day 60 of quarantine I felt an acute desire to escape in gesture. Disassociation from the body while feeling space flatten & time extend... First in a series of 7 works-in-progress .Human & machine co-creation during the first quarantine isolation period in Brooklyn, New York"

WORK ON CANVAS

Artefact Nº 1

2021, Paint on Canvas, 44 x 34 in
Drawing Operations Unit: Generation 4

WORK ON CANVAS

Artefact Nº 2

2021, Paint on Canvas, 44 x 34 in
Drawing Operations Unit: Generation 4

WORK ON CANVAS

Artefact Nº 3

2021, Paint on Canvas, 44 x 34 in
Drawing Operations Unit: Generation 4

WORK ON CANVAS

Artefact Nº 4

2021, Paint on Canvas, 44 x 34 in
Drawing Operations Unit: Generation 4

WORK ON CANVAS

Artefact Nº 5

2021, Paint on Canvas, 44 x 34 in
Drawing Operations Unit: Generation 4

WORK ON CANVAS

Artefact Nº 6

2021, Paint on Canvas, 44 x 34 in
Drawing Operations Unit: Generation 4

WORK ON CANVAS

Artefact Nº 7

2021, Paint on Canvas, 44 x 34 in
Drawing Operations Unit: Generation 4

WORK ON CANVAS

Artefact Nº 8

2021, Paint on Canvas, 44 x 34 in
Drawing Operations Unit: Generation 4

PROJECT

Bihua

feat. Drawing Operations (robotic) Unit, Generation 4, Isloation Drawings created during quarantine lockdown

At Day 60 of quarantine I felt an acute desire to escape in gesture.
Disassociation from the body while feeling space flatten & time extend... First in a series of 7 works-in-progress .Human & machine co-creation during the first quarantine isolation period in Brooklyn, New York

WORK ON CANVAS

Artefact Nº 1

2021, Paint on Canvas, 44 x 34 in
Drawing Operations Unit: Generation 4

WORK ON CANVAS

Artefact Nº 2

2021, Paint on Canvas, 44 x 34 in
Drawing Operations Unit: Generation 4

PROJECT

Drawing Operations Unit:
Generation 2: Memory

An ongoing series exploring machine learning and the artist's hand

Gestures from previous drawings are collected and saved, existing as a memory bank for D.O.U.G._2. Analysis of visual style of historic artists to translate into gesture, as well as colour palette as a collective memory bank from which robotic arm will be able to select.

SELECTED WORKS

WORK ON PAPER

Memory 1

Drawing Operations Unit: Generation 2
24 x 19 in
2017

WORK ON PAPER

Artefact 1

Artefacts Series
19” x 24”
2017

PROJECT

distance (in place)

Drawings created during quarantine lockdown
In collaboration with D.O.U.G._5

Chung’s practice—having moved far beyond simplifying binaries of real and artificial, human and machine—urges the poetic promise of mechanical and artificial systems to imagine forms of closeness in an increasingly estranged world. A result of the human sensorium through and through, her works double down on the entanglement of all bodies (biological, mechanical, and otherwise), never really disembodied but always becoming. - Claire Voon

WORK ON PAPER

Corpus I

2020, Graphite on Paper, 24 x 19 in
Collaboration with D.O.U.G._5.

WORK ON PAPER

Corpus VIII

2020, Graphite on Paper, 24 x 19 in
Collaboration with D.O.U.G._5.

WORK ON PAPER

Corpus II

2020, Graphite on Paper, 24 x 19 in
Collaboration with D.O.U.G._5.

WORK ON PAPER

Corpus III

2020, Graphite on Paper, 24 x 19 in
Collaboration with D.O.U.G._5.

WORK ON PAPER

Corpus V

2020, Graphite on Paper, 24 x 19 in
Collaboration with D.O.U.G._5.

WORK ON PAPER

Corpus VI

2020, Graphite on Paper, 24 x 19 in
Collaboration with D.O.U.G._5.

WORK ON PAPER

Corpus IV

2020, Graphite on Paper, 24 x 19 in
Collaboration with D.O.U.G._5.

WORK ON PAPER

Corpus VII

2020, Graphite on Paper, 24 x 19 in
Collaboration with D.O.U.G._5.

PROJECT

Gestures of Becoming-With

feat. Drawing Operations (robotic) Unit, Generation 4, Isloation Drawings created during quarantine lockdown

" At Day 60 of quarantine I felt an acute desire to escape in gesture. Disassociation from the body while feeling space flatten & time extend... First in a series of 7 works-in-progress .Human & machine co-creation during the first quarantine isolation period in Brooklyn, New York "

WORK ON PAPER

Isolation Study 1

Gestures of Becoming-With
24" x 19in"
2020

WORK ON PAPER

Isolation Study 2

Gestures of Becoming-With
24" x 19in"
2020

WORK ON PAPER

Isolation Study 3

Gestures of Becoming-With
24" x 19in"
2020

WORK ON PAPER

Isolation Study 4

Gestures of Becoming-With
24" x 19in"
2020

WORK ON PAPER

Isolation Study 5

Gestures of Becoming-With
24" x 19in"
2020

WORK ON PAPER

Isolation Study 6

Gestures of Becoming-With
24" x 19in"
2020

WORK ON PAPER

Isolation Study 7

Gestures of Becoming-With
24" x 19in"
2020

PROJECT

Indeterminacy Scores

feat. Drawing Operations (robotic) Unit, Generation 4
Paintings as sound compositions

Referencing John Cage's Fontina Mix, 1958, a provocation for "musical scores of indeterminacy", these experiments were created in collaboration with D.O.U.G._4, with contact mics recording real-time sound feedback on canvas.

WORK ON PAPER

Indeterminacy Score Op.4

2020, Mixed Media, 19in x 24in
Ecologies Of Becoming-With

WORK ON PAPER

Indeterminacy Scores Op.5

2020, Mixed Media, 19in x 24in
Ecologies Of Becoming-With

WORK ON PAPER

Indeterminacy Score Op.1

2020, Mixed Media, 19in x 24in
Ecologies of Becoming-With

WORK ON PAPER

Indeterminacy Score Op.2

2020, Mixed Media, 19in x 24in
Ecologies of Becoming-With

WORK ON PAPER

Indeterminacy Score Op.3

2020, Mixed Media, 19in x 24in
Ecologies of Becoming-With

PROJECT

BiHua 比划

Exploring ideas in Cosmotechnics through gesture; the Dao of traditional chinese painting techniques re-envisioned in VR

Figural fluid studies. Part of an ongoing project interpreting the 八卦 bāguà trigrams figures in the IChing. “Our senses are currently whip-driven by a feverish new pace of technological change. The activities that mark us as human, though, don’t begin, exist in, or end by such a calculus. They pulse, fade out, and pulse again in human tissue, human nerves, and in the elemental humus of memory, dreams, and art, where there are no bygone eras. They are in us, they can speak to us, they can teach us if we desire it.”

MIXED MEDIA

☰ The Creative (Force)

2020, Mixed Media on Aluminum Panel, 4ft Diameter
比划

MIXED MEDIA

☲ The Clinging (Radiance)

2020, Mixed Media on Aluminum Panel, 4ft Diameter
比划

MIXED MEDIA

☶ Keeping Still (Bound)

2020, Mixed Media on Aluminum Panel, 4ft Diameter
比划

MIXED MEDIA

☴ The Gentle (Ground)

2020, Mixed Media on Aluminum Panel, 4ft Diameter
比划

PROJECT

Hylomorphism I Series

MIXED MEDIA

Untitled

Hylomorphism Studies
90in x 60in
2018

MIXED MEDIA

Untitled

Hylomorphism Studies
90in x 60in
2018

MIXED MEDIA

Application for Release
From the Dream

Hylomorphism Studies
90in x 60in
2018

PROJECT

Omnia per Omnia

feat. Drawing Operations (robotic) Unit, Generation 3, Live Autonomous System. The project reimagines the tradition of landscape painting as a collaboration between an artist, a robotic swarm, and the dynamic flow of a city.

The work explores the poetics of various modes of sensing: human and machine, organic and synthetic, and improvisational and computational. Through a collaborative drawing performance between Sougwen and a swarm of custom-designed drawing robots, the project explores the composite agency of an human and machine as a speculation on new pluralities.

WORK ON CANVAS

Density Study

Omnia per Omnia
(40.761124, -73.999089)
48in x 48in
2018

WORK ON CANVAS

Dwell Study

Omnia per Omnia
(40.695045, -73.972466)
48in x 48in
2018

WORK ON CANVAS

Velocity Study

Omnia per Omnia
(40.722215, -73.992944)
48in x 48in
2018

WORK ON CANVAS

Direction Study

Omnia per Omnia
(40.712848, -73.989411)
48in x 48in
2018

PROJECT

Drawing Operations
Unit: Generation 1

feat. Drawing Operations (robotic) Unit, Generation 1,
Mimicry Drawings created during live performances

The robot mimics the artist's drawing gesture and vice versa in real time, resulting in a synchronous, interpretive performance. This is the first stage of an ongoing study examining human and robotic interaction as an artistic collaboration.