49.0326° N, 119.4691° W

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.


BODY MACHINE (MERIDIANS) - Desert Biome

50.8341° N, 120.9028° W

26.7543° N, 55.8506° E

26.6178° N, 37.9234° E

24.7383° S, 15.2836° E

32.7791° N, 106.1719° W

2.5448° S, 42.8329° W

25.5216° N, 8.6598° E

32.2500° N, 111.0000° W

21.5913° N, 58.6162° E

BODY MACHINE (MERIDIANS) is a body of work in Chung's Operational Art practice that extends the operation of drawing from surface to air, and from studio to ecosystem. Across 2023–2024, Chung conducted field research in the forests of Tepoztlán (Mexico) and the Arctic glaciers of Svalbard (Norway) capturing environmental data that trained custom models for the Machine Meridians: robotic sculptures drawn in air that respond to the characteristics of each biome. The resulting Spatial Meridian Dataset treats the body as a generative system across climatic scales.

Sougwen Chung

BODY MACHINE (MERIDIANS) - Desert Biome

Overview

"A robot does not exist. It is not a machine — only a product of imagination, of fictive fabrication, the art of illusion."

Artworks:

Featured

All