Omnia per Omnia  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.

Collaborators: 

Sougwen Chung & D.O.U.G._L.A.S. (Drawing Operations Unit:  Generation_3 Live Autonomous System).

What does it mean to collaborate with the spaces we inhabit, the tools we build? Where does “I” end and “we” begin?

Omnia Paintings
Four paintings, four optical-flow metrics, four locations — a distributed portrait of the city

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01

01 — density study
(40.761124, -73.999089) / Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan
2018

Acrylic on canvas
48 × 48 in

Process: optical flow data and custom robotic system

In Omnia per Omnia, I collaborate through a drawing duet with machines to understand my own engagement to technological complexity, as articulated by a multi-agent body, and represent how these technological systems see in contrast to humans.

We are living in a time of unprecedented complexity, 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.

- Adrienne Rich

02

02 — dwell study
(40.695045, -73.972466)
Fort Greene, Brooklyn
2018

Acrylic on canvas
48 × 48 in

Process: optical flow data
and custom robotic system

#drawingwithdoug

03

03 — direction study
(40.712848, -73.989411)
Lower East Side, Manhattan
2018

Acrylic on canvas
48 × 48 in
Process: optical flow data
and custom robotic system

04

04 — velocity study
(40.722215, -73.992944)
East Village, Manhattan
2018

Acrylic on canvas
48 × 48 in
Process: optical flow
data and custom
robotic system

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Exhbition & Performance

Painting performances are 9 minutes in length. The collaboration is entirely improvised and showcases a process of human & robotic co-creation.

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Sougwen Chung,
Omnia per Omnia (Performance) 2018

Akira Kanayama,
Remote Controlled painting, 1958

In Gutai Art, the human spirit and matter shake hands with each other while keeping their distance. Matter never compromises itself with the spirit; the spirit never dominates matter. When matter remains intact and exposes its characteristics, it starts telling a story and even cries out. To make the fullest use of matter is to make use of the spirit. By enhancing the spirit, matter is brought to the height of the spirit.

Credit: Jiro Yoshihara, "Gutai Manifesto," 1956. 

Research

If we want our machines
to think, we need to
teach them to see.

-FEI FEI LI
(Professor of Computer Studies and AI Research at Stanford)

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(BIO)METRICS OF THE CITY

The city of New York will become a conductor for multi-agent robotic agency. Motion vectors linked to DOUG_LAS robot system’s behaviour in the painting duet. Artist and this system of machines participate in the creation of an ephemeral portrait of a city in perpetual transition, the birthplace of E.A.T.

The first in a series of portraits of cities.

SURVEILLANCE APERTURES

What do public cameras see?How do they see us? Recordings of the different states of the city via publically available surveillance feeds. Collecting states through the algorithm’s perspective: information about density, dwell, direction and velocity. 

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WAYS OF SEEING

The philosophical underpinnings of the Bell Labs Motion Engine captures the optical flow of a scene as opposed to the single object; it privileges the action of the collective (the behaviour of the crowd) over individual surveillance (face tracking and recognition). The latter way of seeing as fragmented and discrete. Do CV systems that view a scene as a composition of discrete objects shape a sense of modern isolation?

How can computational ways of seeing reframe a collective imagination?

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COLLABORATION

Omnia per Omnia is a continuation of a long-term project exploring human & robotic collaboration. This generation saw an evolution of the robotic form from singular to collective, as 20 custom designed units.

RITUAL

The paintings are a continuation of 5 years of blue studies on paper. Hex values to signify the hue of a generational time frame.

#001985

READING LIST

Zylinska, Joanna. The Perception Machine: Our Photographic Future between the Eye and Ai. The MIT Press, 2023.

Bratton, Benjamin H. The Stack - On Software and Sovereignty. MIT Press, 2016.

BERGER, JOHN. LANDSCAPES: John Berger on Art. VERSO, 2018.

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Nusselder André. Interface Fantasy: a Lacanian Cyborg Ontology. MIT Press, 2010.

Rich,Adrienne. Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations. W.W. Norton & Co., 2002

Bacon,Francis.  Advancement of Learning ; and, Novum Organum ; and, New Atlantis. EncyclopæDia Britannica, 1955.

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Tiampo, Ming, and Alexandra Munroe. Gutai: Splendid Playground. Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2013.

Shaviro, Steven. Connected, or, What It Means to Live in the Network Society. University of Minnesota Press, 2003.

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Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies, vol. 14, no. 3, 1988

SELECTED PRESS

Stinson, Elizabeth. “What Artists Can Teach Us About Making Technology More Human.”Wired, Conde Nast, 15 May 2018, www.wired.com/story/bell-labs-eat-only-human-mana-contemporary/.

Abraham, Irina. “What Happens When Tech Engineers and Artists Collaborate? .” White Hot Magazine, 30 May 2018, whitehotmagazine.com/articles/bell-labs-at-mana-contemporary/3966.

FILM CREDITS

Concept by Sougwen Chung

Director: Cutter Hodierne

Producer: Taylor Shung

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Director of Photography: Matthew Clegg

Production Design: Arriane Alizio

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Original Score by Chris Leung & Mickey Partlow

ROBOTICS TEAM

Prototype: Sougwen Chung

Motion Engine: Larry O’Gorman, Nokia Bell Labs

Technical Direction: Andy Cavatorta  

Fabrication & Design: Young Buk

Camera Systems Design: Scott Peterman

THANK YOU

Charlie Whitney, Domnhaill

Hernon, Aki Akiwumi,

Leif Percield, Ray Golden, Josh

Holtsford, Julia Kaganskiy,

Vida Chang, Neil Mendoza, Paolo

Salvagione, Sherry Wong

Commissioned by Nokia Bell Labs as part of

Experiments in Art and Technology artist

residency program, organized by New

Museum’s incubator NEW INC.

To learn more about the body of work, please visit the Press section.
For booking inquiries, please contact office@scilicet.xyz
For official press images, go here