Most AI-based artists work exclusively in front of their computers. Sougwen Chung is different: they train robots to physically paint in tandem with them on massive canvases. Before they used AI, Chung, who identifies as nonbinary, painted expansive abstract artworks filled with bold, flowing lines. They then trained a neural net on decades of those paintings—and built robots trained on those neural nets to paint with them in real time. When they paint a line, the robots mimic Chung’s line and then extend it outward with new ideas and patterns. “What I’m chasing is that surprise and wonder in that machine translation,” Chung says.

Chung, 38, travels the world, painting with their robots for live audiences. Chung compares their relationship with their robots to that of a musician with their violin. “In some ways, the robotic system is a kinetic instrument that I’m navigating with,” they say.

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“My work, at its simplest level, is about exploring the contradictions that stem from not fitting neatly into one category,” Sougwen Chung, who identifies as nonbinary, said on Sunday in Dubai, where they accepted a TIME100 Impact Award for their influence on the field of artificial intelligence. “I like to think of [it] as a new hybridity.” Read more: https://time.com/collection/time100-i...

💙 Grateful to the whole team at @TIME for the #TIME100 Impact Award, recognizing individuals who have gone above and beyond to move their industries—and the world—forward in the AI space. I am honored to be one of these four recipients.

It's been a surreal few days, so many reflections and images to share, but first:

I took some time to reflect on the moment for my acceptance speech, excerpted below.

"I’m inspired by Grace Lee Boggs who wrote that these are the times to grow our souls. She believed that creativity is vital in producing the necessary conditions not just for our survival, but for our evolution. Her words, and Grace’s life as an Asian-american philosopher and activist, are a testament to hybridity – hybridity of culture and of thought. Her authorship, the works of my peers, and the creative energy of the new generation continue to challenge and inspire me everyday.

I have learned that traditional forms of creativity must shape, but not be replaced by, technological development. That building our own tools and AI systems can help us sit with the existential questions posed by new technologies – A way that fear and hope can be held in the mind at the same time. We’ve observed the damage to our planet done by unchecked technological growth – the damage to our creative industries, too. We need now, more than ever, approaches that foreground hybrid creative innovation to help shape the development of the technology that shapes us, while stewarding what came before.

This award is a spotlight on the meaning made by the artists of today, the artists that came before, and the ones to come. We carry with us the knowledge that exploring the human condition despite the odds, shapes the world in vital and profound ways.

We urge you to move beyond the binary – of thinking and of making and being – and to create the third path with us – To explore the in-between; as a space of imagination and hybridity.

Together we can grow our souls to create the future we want to see, and there is much to do. Thank you so much."

https://time.com/collection/time100-impact-awards/

Deeply grateful to @Lumen_prize, for awarding the Art and Technology Prize to Drawing Operations, a project I started in 2015 exploring human and machine collaboration. Thank you Carla Rapoport, and Jack Addis for your support and welcoming me into the Lumens family.
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In these deeply uncertain times, I find myself thinking of #DonnaHaraway’s writing in Staying With The Trouble 🖤: “It matters what worlds world worlds. We become together or not at all." Collaboration, for me, is a way to steer away from "a technophobic spiral, by conceiving of humans & machines as interacting parts of complex adaptive systems." .
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Thank you to the early support of Drawing Operations Unit: Generation 1 by @juliaxgulia Karen Wong and Lisa Phillips through @NewMuseum’s incubator project @NewInc. And the continued development of Generation 2: Memory by CG-Arts NTT InterCommunication Center @japan_media_arts_festival and @jmaf_residency@a.wakimoto@takahikoazami. Was a pleasure to have iterations researched at Pier Nine @sherryingw and @salvagione.
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Currently developing forthcoming generations, focused on Collective Collaboration with the support of @googleartsculture@dh7net
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Thankful for the contributions of friends and collaborators @hardmaru@YotamMann, @MaryFranck, @_frnsys & musical collaborator @aquarianyes.
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So much more to come. 🌹