Drawing in virtual reality challenges you to draw what’s in your imagination, and then inhabit it.

At the end of 2016, I participated in an Artist in Residence Program by Google TiltBrush. During the residency, the artists (including Peter Chan, The New Yorker, Bradley Theodore, Dustin Yellin, Steve Teeps & Isaac Cohen) were encouraged to experiment with the tool, collaborate with and give feedback to the Tiltbrush team, with the intention of exploring the possibilities of drawing in virtual reality. 

 


One of the highlights, for me, was working with the engineering team. Through a series of delightful lunch conversations, at the end of my residency, Tiltbrush released an open-source python script, coded by Paul Du Bois, allowing users to generate a spline export from the program to other software. Essentially, this teases the viability of VR as a creative production tool. This export makes generating printable models from VR a lot easier, and I’ve been employing it in my process to explore gesture-driven sculpture.

I’ll be posting more of my experiments in the next few weeks/months

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works by sougwen

GENESIS (2024)what becomes of the human hand?

BODY MACHINE (MERIDIANS) - 2024machines as extensions of living systems

Assembly Lines (2022)a painting performance with a robotic swarm connected to the flow of a city

Mutations of Presence (2021)Exploring spectrality through sequencing bio-feedback to a machine

F.R.A.N. Flora Rearing Agricultural Network (2020)exploring machine and flora as part of a sympoietic, self-supporting networked system with human as gardener.

Exquisite Corpus (2019)a performance installation exploring human, machine, and ecological bodies

Omnia per Omnia (2018)a painting performance with a robotic swarm connected to the flow of a city

Into The Light (2019)an audiovisual AR installation

Artefacts (2019)a human and machine collaborative drawing

Drawing Operations (2018)a human and machine collaborative duet

Drawing Operations (2017)a human & machine drawing collaboration involving memory.

Drawing Operations (2015)a human & robot drawing collaboration involving mimicry

Chiaroscuro (2013)a spatial interplay of light and shadow as an immersive installation

Preparatory Gestures (2017)a series of sculpture studies in VR

Mycelia (2018)a series of sculptures inspired by bio-inspired cognition

Ecdysis (2013)a study in performative architecture

High Tide (Étude Op. 2, No. 4)a painting exploring the dynamics of change

The Limitless, The Absolute (2017)a painting inspired by the 八卦 Trigrams of the IChing

Cardia (2012)a short film depicting a transgression from interior to exterior

Apolysis (2014)a short film in collaboration with Clint Mansell

Untitled (Étude Op. 1, No. 1-4)a series of drawings exploring synesthesia

Chiaro Oscuro Prototypesa series of form studies with paper

Topographies (2015)a series of paintings inspired by nature and flow states

Dénouement (Recurrent fevers of unknown origin)

Sougwen 愫君 Chung is a Chinese-Canadian artist and researcher. Chung is the founder and artistic director of ⇢ SCILICET, a studio exploring human & non-human collaboration.

A former research fellow at MIT’s Media Lab, Sougwen is considered a pioneer in the field of human-machine collaboration – exploring the mark-made-by-hand and the mark-made-by-machine as an approach to understanding the dynamics of humans and systems. 

— Sougwen 愫君 Chung is a Chinese-born, Canadian-raised artist & (re)searcher based in London / New York / Hong Kong.

— Sougwen 愫君 Chung is a Chinese-born, Canadian-raised artist & (re)searcher based in London / New York / Hong Kong.

— Sougwen 愫君 Chung is a Chinese-born, Canadian-raised artist & (re)searcher based in London / New York / Hong Kong.

Copyright Sougwen Chung
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