BODY MACHINE (MERIDIANS) is a series of robotic sculptures drawn in air, responding to environmental data captured in forest, glacial, and desert biomes.

The Machine Meridians are organized across two registers. Cybernetic Meridians are trained on computational and infrastructural systems: networks, protocols, built environments. Biomimetic Meridians are trained on environmental data from organic ecosystems: forest canopy, glacial flow, desert wind pattern, mycelial and rhizomatic structure. 

Across these registers, the sculptures map two scales: Macrobiomes (forest, desert, glacier) and Microbiomes (mycelial, rhizomatic).

Drawing on Gilbert Simondon's argument that the machine is a product of imagination, fabrication, and illusion rather than a determinate object, BODY MACHINE (MERIDIANS) treats the robotic form as a medium shaped by its context, responsive to it rather than imposing on it. The work sits at the edge of the studio, where the body's movement becomes environmental data and the machine's form becomes a response to biome.

The work treats the robotic form as permeable: an extension of the body rather than a tool operated by it, a site where the body's gestures are reconstituted at new scales.

The term 'meridian' carries two meanings, one cartographic, one somatic, that the work holds together. In cartography, a meridian is a line of longitude: a vertical measurement across the planet. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, a 經脈 (jīngmài) is a channel along which 氣 (qì) moves through the body, and 子午線 (zǐwǔxiàn) names the central meridian of the body along its vertical axis. 

A meridian is therefore both a measurement of the earth and a structure of the body. BODY MACHINE (MERIDIANS) works at the intersection of these readings, taking the body's gestural output at studio scale and mapping it across field-recorded data from three climatic biomes.

Each piece is drawn in air, at the scale of the body. The resulting data traces a specific kind of reach: the whole body's movement in three dimensions, rather than the wrist's movement across a page. Captured against environmental data from each biome, the gestures are then rendered as sculptural form: a vertical meridian traced at studio scale, mapped against the horizontal meridian of the earth.

The Machine Meridians are organized across two registers. Cybernetic Meridians are trained on computational and infrastructural systems: networks, protocols, built environments. Biomimetic Meridians are trained on environmental data from organic ecosystems: forest canopy, glacial flow, desert wind pattern, mycelial and rhizomatic structure. Across these registers, the sculptures map two scales: Macrobiomes (forest, desert, glacier) and Microbiomes (mycelial, rhizomatic).

The gestural lines traced during each performance are captured as Meridian Data: movement data that treats the body as a generative system across climatic scales. Aggregated across 2023–2024, these traces form the Spatial Meridian Dataset, an archive of embodied gesture in response to specific biomes. The dataset joins Chung's longer-running archive of two decades of drawing gesture, the training substrate for the Drawing Operations system, and extends it from planar (canvas) to spatial (air), and from studio to field.

Across 2023–2024, Chung conducted field research in Tepoztlán, Morelos (Mexico) and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard (Norway). Environmental data captured during these residencies — light, wind pattern, temperature gradient, ambient sound, organic and inorganic structure — informed the custom models that drive the Machine Meridians.