Artificial Agency
2025-ongoing
Artificial Agency is an ongoing body of work questioning and reimagining our agency in the age of algorithms.
It started as an interactive lecture performance, SOUR GUMMIES DON’T CRY (2025), where theviewers are given the power to control my body (and my digital avatars) via a real-time participatory application on the web, and I execute their instructions like a humanoid or NPC while simultaneously giving a speech on agency.
Through meaningful discomfort with a touch of playfulness, the work encourages the audience to critically reflect on data surveillance, digital body politics, and the latest developments of agentic AI. How is the illusion of agency used as a means of digital (self-)colonization? Facing the challenges of algorithmic control, how can we reclaim our agency?
The piece has been presented in various academic, gallery, public spaces, and online, engaging with diverse audiences ranging from computer scientists at the 2025 UbiComp/ISWC Conference to the general public at the Oculus World Trade Center in New York. It also becomes a social experiment – who holds the power here: the audience, the artist, or the system itself? The interactive system designed specifically for the performance aims to reconfigure a more collective and fluid type of agency through constant interactions.
The Oculus, New York, 2025
The Oculus, New York, 2025
Livestream on Twitch, 2025NYU Shanghai, 2025
Work in Progress
Currently I am developing the piece slowly but intentionaly into an immersive experience with performance, video, sound, artifacts, and a video game.