Ian Cheng (born March 29, 1984) is an American artist known for his live simulations that explore the capacity of living agents to deal with change. His simulations, commonly understood as "virtual ecosystems" are "less about the wonders of new technologies than about the potential for these tools to realize ways of relating to a chaotic existence." His work has been widely exhibited internationally, including

MoMA PS1 MoMA PS1 is a contemporary art institution located in Court Square in the Long Island City neighborhood in the borough of Queens, New York City. In addition to its exhibitions, the institution organizes the Sunday Sessions performance series, the ...

Serpentine Galleries The Serpentine Galleries are two contemporary art galleries in Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Central London. Recently rebranded to just Serpentine, the organisation is split across Serpentine South, previously known as the Serpentine Gallery, ...

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...

Hirshhorn Museum The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was desi ...

Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo The Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo is a non-profit contemporary arts institution based in Turin, Italy, founded by arts collector Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in 1995. History In 1995, Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo established the Fo ...

, , and other institutions.

Early life and education

Cheng was born in Los Angeles, CA, in 1984. Cheng attended

Van Nuys High School Van Nuys High School (VNHS) is a public high school in the Van Nuys district of Los Angeles, belonging to the Los Angeles Unified School District: District 2. The school is home to a Residential Program and three Magnet Programs—Math/Science, P ...

. Cheng graduated from

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in 2006 with a dual degree in cognitive science and art practice. Cheng worked at Industrial Light & Magic, George Lucas's visual effects company. Cheng attended

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, where he earned his MFA in 2009. Cheng worked in the studio of artist

Pierre Huyghe Pierre Huyghe (born 11 September 1962) is a French artist who works in a variety of media from films and sculptures to public interventions and living systems. Education Pierre Huyghe (pronounced ''hweeg'') was born in Paris in 1962. He lives ...

from 2010 to 2012 and also worked as co-director at Paul Chan's independent New York based publishing company,

Badlands Unlimited Badlands Unlimited was a New York-based independent publisher founded by the artist Paul Chan in 2010. The press published texts by and with other artists in the form of paperbacks, ebooks, digital group exhibitions, a stone book, and other vario ...

, founded in 2010.

Work

Cheng popularized the use of

simulation A simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. Simulations require the use of models; the model represents the key characteristics or behaviors of the selected system or process, whereas the s ...

as a medium available to artistic practice, capable of composing together both man-made and algorithmically generated content that together produce emergent behavior over an infinite duration. Cheng's work highlights the capacity of simulation to express the unpredictable dynamic between order and chaos in a complex system. Cheng coined the term “live simulation” as a subset of simulation that is presented in public in real-time without regard for an optimal outcome or pre-defined fitness criteria. Since 2013, Cheng has produced a series of simulations exploring an AI-based agent's capacity to deal with an ever-changing environment. From 2015 to 2017, Cheng developed ''Emissaries'', a trilogy of episodic live simulations that “explore the history of cognitive evolution, past and future.” Unlike previous simulations, ''Emissaries'' introduced a narrative agent, the emissary, whose motivation to enact a story was set into conflict with the open-ended chaos of the simulation. Cheng describes the archetype of the emissary as one who "is caught between unravelling old realities and emerging weird one," an embodied way to explore the relationship between meaning and meaninglessness. Cheng drew inspiration from the narrative nature of consciousness described by

Julian Jaynes Julian Jaynes (February 27, 1920 – November 21, 1997) was an American researcher in psychology at Yale and Princeton for nearly 25 years and best known for his 1976 book '' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind' ...

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind ''The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind'' is a 1976 book by the Princeton psychologist, psychohistorian and consciousness theorist Julian Jaynes (1920-1997). The book addresses the problematic nature of consciousness ...

. At

in 2018, Cheng premiered BOB (Bag of Beliefs), an AI-based creature whose personality, body, and life script evolve across exhibitions in what Cheng calls “art with a nervous system.” BOB premiered in the United States in 2019 at Gladstone Gallery. BOB features a unique model of AI that combines an inductive engine for the learning of rule-based beliefs from sensory experiences with a motivational framework composed of mini-personalities called "demons". Each demon competes for control of BOB's body in a "congress of demons", and each utilizes the inductive engine to achieve its motivations while minimizing surprise. Viewers were invited to send their own stream of stimuli to BOB through BOB Shrine, an iOS app. At LUMA Arles in April 2021, Cheng premiered Life After BOB: The Chalice Study, the first episode in a planned anime series built in the Unity game engine and presented in real-time. Life After BOB toured through 2022, showing at LUMA Westbau, The Shed, Leeum Museum, and Light Art Space.

Other activities

Cheng directed the music video Brats, by Liars. At

Frieze In architecture, the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Paterae are also usually used to decorate friezes. Even when neither columns nor ...

London in 2013, Cheng premiered Entropy Wrangler Cloud, one of the first artworks made for

virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), e ...

, using first generation

Oculus Rift Oculus Rift is a discontinued line of virtual reality headsets developed and manufactured by Oculus VR, a division of Meta Platforms, released on March 28, 2016. In 2012 Oculus initiated a Kickstarter campaign to fund the Rift's development, af ...

headsets. Cheng developed ''Bad Corgi'', an

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

app commissioned by

, which has been called a "shadowy mindfulness app for contemplating chaos."

Exhibitions

*''Life After BOB: The Chalice Study'' at Light Art Space, Berlin, 2022 *''Emissaries'' at Fundacion Fernando de Castro, 2020 *''Uncanny Valley: Being Human in the Age of AI'' at

de Young Museum The de Young Museum, formally the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, is a fine arts museum located in San Francisco, California. Located in Golden Gate Park, it is a component of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, along with the California Pala ...

, 2020 *''Mud Muses'' at

Moderna Museet Moderna Museet ("the Museum of Modern Art"), Stockholm, Sweden, is a state museum for modern and contemporary art located on the island of Skeppsholmen in central Stockholm, opened in 1958. In 2009, the museum opened a new branch in Malmö i ...

, Stockholm, 2019 *''If the Snake'' at Okayama Art Summit, 2019 *''May You Live in Interesting Times'' at 58th Venice Biennale, 2019 *''New Order: Art and Technology in the Twenty-First Century'' at the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, New York, 2019 *''BOB'' at Gladstone Gallery, 2019 *''BOB'' at

, 2018 *''Emissaries'' at Julia Stoschek Collection, 2018 *''Etre moderne: Le MoMA à Paris'' at

Fondation Louis Vuitton The Louis Vuitton Foundation (French: ''Fondation d'entreprise Louis-Vuitton''), previously Louis Vuitton Foundation for Creation (''Fondation Louis-Vuitton pour la création''), is a French art museum and cultural center sponsored by the group LV ...

, 2017 *''Being There'' at

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art is an art museum located on the shore of the Øresund Sound in Humlebæk, north of Copenhagen, Denmark. It is the most visited art museum in Denmark, and has an extensive permanent collection of modern and cont ...

, 2017 *''Ian Cheng'' at

Carnegie Museum of Art The Carnegie Museum of Art, is an art museum in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Originally known as the Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute and was at what is now the Main Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsbur ...

, 2017 *''Emissaries'' at

, 2017 *"Ten Days Six Nights" at

Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery located in London. It houses the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It ...

, 2017 *''Forking at Perfection'' at , 2016 *''Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art 1905–2016'' at

, 2016 *''Take Me (I’m Yours)'',

Jewish Museum A Jewish museum is a museum which focuses upon Jews and may refer seek to explore and share the Jewish experience in a given area. List of Jewish museums Notable Jewish museums include: *Albania ** Solomon Museum, Berat *Australia ** Jewish Mu ...

, New York, 2016 *

Liverpool Biennial Liverpool Biennial is the largest international contemporary art festival in the United Kingdom. Every two years, the city of Liverpool hosts an extensive range of artworks, projects, and a programme of events. The biennial commissions leading ...

2016, Liverpool, 2016 *''WELT AM DRAHT'', Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin, 2016 *''Suspended Animation'', curated by Gianni Jetzer,

, Washington, 2016 *''Stranger'',

Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

, 2016 *''Emissary Forks At Perfection'' at

Pilar Corrias Pilar Corrias is a British contemporary art gallery founded by Pilar Corrias. Its first gallery space in Eastcastle Street, London, designed by Rem Koolhaas, opened in 2008. At the time, Corrias was the first woman to open a new art gallery in th ...

, London, 2015 *''Emissary in the Squat of Gods'', curated by

Hans Ulrich Obrist Hans Ulrich Obrist (born 1968) is a Swiss art curator, critic, and historian of art. He is artistic director at the Serpentine Galleries, London. Obrist is the author of ''The Interview Project'', an extensive ongoing project of interviews. He is ...

, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, 2015 *"Real Humans", curated by Elodie Evers, Irina Raskin, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 2015 *''Ian Cheng'', curated by Filipa Ramos, Triennale Di Milano, Milan, 2014 *''Entropy Wrangler Cloud'', Frame, Frieze London, London, 2013 *''Entropy Wrangler'' Off Vendome, Düsseldorf, 2013

Collections

Cheng's work is collected by institutions including Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Migros Museum, Zurich; Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris; Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf; Yuz Museum, Shanghai.

Early life and education

Work

Other activities

Exhibitions

Collections

References

External links