Sougwen Chung

Biography

Sougwen Chung is a Canadian-born, Chinese-raised artist and researcher based in London, widely regarded as a pioneer in the field of human-machine collaboration. Her multidisciplinary practice spans installation, drawing, performance, and sculpture, developed in ongoing dialogue with robotics, machine learning, and bio-sensing technologies. In 2015, while a research affiliate at the MIT Media Lab, Chung began developing the Drawing Operations Unit, known as D.O.U.G., a robotic drawing system that has evolved over the following decade through successive generations exploring mimicry, memory, biofeedback, and increasingly autonomous collaboration between human gesture and machine response. Rather than treating robots and AI systems as tools for automation, Chung frames her robotic collaborators as creative partners, staging live drawing performances in which her own hand and a robotic arm respond to and influence one another in real time, producing works that embody a genuine dialogue between biological and artificial intelligence. Her work has been the subject of extensive institutional and media attention, with profiles and features in The Art Newspaper, The Washington Post, and MIT Technology Review, and she has spoken publicly about her practice at TED, where she described her lifelong fascination with the dynamics between individuals and systems. Chung's exhibitions and performances have appeared at major venues internationally, including a solo presentation of her RECURSIONS series that combined robotics, AI, painting, and live performance. Through her sustained, deeply personal engagement with robotic systems over the course of a decade-long body of work, Chung has helped define what meaningful collaboration between humans and machines can look like within contemporary art, positioning her among the most significant artists working at the intersection of technology, embodiment, and creative practice today.