Q&A: Sougwen Chung Maps the Landscape of the Mind
When the robots inevitably take over planet earth, visual artist Sougwen Chung will already have a head start. In her project Drawing Operations Unit: Generation One, Chung collaborated with a robotic arm which mimicked her style as she drew and then learned from it and adapted to it. The finished work was part human, part machine, but the differences between the two were often disconcertingly hard to discern.
For her latest project, Topographies, Chung studies the overlap between natural physical terrain and the landscape of the mind – a kind of collaboration between the concrete and the abstract. Prints from the series will be available via The Ghostly Store and, in conjunction with series, Chung is unveiling a new site to showcase her print work. To commemorate the event, we spoke with Chung about the ways environment figures into her work, and her dedication to finding the places where the emotional and the tangible intersect.
How much time do you usually set aside to work?
I love to work, I don’t really set aside time. I used to, but the lines have blurred over the years. The more I grow creatively, the more I find myself in a perpetual negotiation with the work I’ve done, and will do, through the work I’m making – as if it’s a separate entity with its own centre of gravity, flaws, curiosities, and potential. It’s like an ongoing conversation I’m having. So time to work becomes more difficult to quantify. Even if my hands aren’t producing, I’m researching, or writing, or thinking about a project or direction which becomes part of it. Such is the nature of self-initiated work, I think.
In general, my process has become far more compulsive — maybe I’m entertaining the notion that a sort of tempestuous immediacy is a viable life choice. It’s my own little rebellion against the younger version of me which was more into GTD, time blocking and to-do lists. Self-regulation taken to extremes can be kind of uptight. I admire the process, but it’s so austere. It leaves less room for spontaneity, immediacy, and mischief. A bit of order here, a bit of chaos there…
What is the ideal environment for you to create?
As much variety as possible. It’s a sort of weird creative challenge – or perhaps slight masochistic predilection – to be able to work in a variety of environments. A few months ago I took a train across the country for a few days… that was a mobile-studio experience. Four days on a train. Quiet and roaming and weird and picturesque. And dramatic, because trains.
Our generation has collectively moved beyond the conventional notion of the artist or musician in her fixed studio as a norm. There are beneficial aspects of that, for sure, but I find the freedom and challenge of variety more exploratory, a bit more contemporary.
Ultimately, however, all I really need a stick of graphite and paper. My work may be formally maximalist but I’m a minimalist with materials, at heart.
This new series is called Topographies, which implies a focus on land and earth. What drew you to this subject matter?
Topography is a study of terrain – at its core, a practice of translation. It’s the visual representation of an environment, as opposed to a singular object. This series marks a shift in my Études series. There was an objectness to my previous compositions, a singularness. An object implies proximal relation, the response to it is binary. Topography is different, the details envelop you. Topography is about depicting systems, a type of terrain.
As for what drew me to the subject matter – I don’t know if I could say, directly, as none of the pieces are or seek to be representational of an existing physical land mass. Each piece is a result of a improvisational process of drawing and software. The compositions that end up being made may subconsciously reflect aspects of my thinking or my life at the time. In general, I’ve been engaging with and researching various social systems, negotiating a flux of geographic terrains.
Each study of the Topographies series is a space for myself and the viewer to inhabit, the series is an atlas of imagined environments.
Can you tell me a bit about the process behind Topographies?
As source material, I combined drawings from the road with digital sculpture to create a representation of place, constructed by hand-rendered marks. The marks are an expression of the immediate moment, which are then used as a tapestry for the final forms. If flow states as mark-making is a mapping of inner states and cognitive terrain, Topographies hybridizes the representation of physical and emotional terrain as a visual metaphor.
I try to ensure that my creative process accommodates immediacy and spontaneity so that potential for discovery is never occluded. In my explorations in drawing, I’ve found that intuitive creation of a form can often resemble natural landscapes. “High Tide” began as a study in abstraction and nascent tension in form that resembled a wave before its breaking point. It was non-representational in process, but resulted in a familiar, topographic form. I wanted to extend that notion into this new series of études, which led me to Topographies.
What are you working on now?
Recently, I’ve been developing a drawing collaboration with a robotic arm. It’s a spontaneous process experiment in drawing, code and movement. I call the project Drawing Operations and the robot arm even got a nickname in the process (D.O.U.G._1; short for Drawing Operations Unit: Generation 1) I drew with the robotic arm as a performance at a group show alongside friends at NEW INC, a museum-led incubator I’m a part of, in New York a few months ago.
I couldn’t get the image of a robotic arm co-creating with a human hand out of my mind, and when it materialized it was so different from what I’d anticipated but also very familiar.
Drawing Operations was largely inspired by the instructive nature of Sol Lewitt’s Wall Drawings, my own process of mark-making, and perhaps a visual counter-argument to a dystopian fantasy about technology we, on some level, all entertain. It explores the expressive immediacy of drawing as an artistic collaboration between a human and machine. And I get to call a drawing robot D.O.U.G. so, there’s that.
You’re launching a new site in conjunction with these prints – what led to your decision to do that?
It was time to streamline. I still post teasers and random fragments to my instagram and twitter, but now I’ve collected some ongoing projects like #drawingwithdoug, praesentia drawings and updates from my research at The Media Lab onto my process blog in a more readable format. I still haven’t found a place to put my #falconfriday posts but when that day comes I’ll probably throw a party.
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