Benjamin Bacon is an Associate Professor of Media & Arts and the Major Convener of the Computation & Design program at Duke Kunshan University (DKU). He is the co-director of the Duke-DKU Presence Lab and the co-founder of the Design, Technology, and Radical Media Lab (DTRM). He is a fellow at V2_Lab for the Unstable Media and the co-lead of the Art, Media, and Cybernetics (AMC) working group at the American Society of Cybernetics (ASC). His practice centers around explorations into computation, its qualities and characteristics as a creative medium, and its changing relationship with society and industry perception. Four main exploratory trajectories have persisted in his research and practice: computational media, machine art, sound, and reality media. His creations have taken the form of mechanical sculptures, machine-learning neural networks, networked systems, experimental interfaces, body-hacking, and sound. His methodology as an artist is fundamentally rooted in the design research process. It is experimental in its essence, often reliant on direct interaction with materials. His conceptual approach is at times playful, at times critical, at times commentary, and at times speculative.
Rui Hu is an Assistant Professor of Computation and Design at Duke Kunshan University (DKU). As an artist, Rui Hu works with computer graphics, moving images, installation, and game and virtual simulation technologies. His practice and research explore the issues of time and temporality from a multitude of perspectives, such as causation, prediction, decision, and language. He is the recipient of the Best Experimental Animation Award at the 60th Ann Arbor Film Festival, a Jury Special Mention at the 25FPS Festival Croatia, a finalist of the IFVA Award from the Hong Kong Arts Centre, a UCLA Clifton Webb Scholarship, and a SAIC New Artists Society Award. His work has been shown in exhibitions and screenings at art spaces, institutions, festivals, and conferences, including the International Film Festival Rotterdam; UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; Objectifs Centre, Singapore; Times Museum, Guangzhou; Three Shadows, Xiamen; IFVA at the Hong Kong Arts Centre; Wuhan Biennale; Siggraph Asia; ISEA, among others. Texts on his work can be found on Artforum, Artforum China, Ocula, Killscreen, etc.
Vivian Xu is an Assistant Professor of Media and Art at Duke Kunshan University (DKU). Her work investigates issues at the intersection of biology, material ecology, technology, and cybernetics. Her creative practice is research-driven, process-based, and informed by practices between the arts and sciences that merge methods from the studio and the laboratory. Xu’s work has been exhibited and presented at various institutions in Asia, the United States, and Europe, including the National Art Museum of China (China), the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra (China), Power Station of Art (China), Three Shadows Photography Art Center (China), Fotograpfiska (China), NTU Center for Contemporary Art (Singapore), the New York Science Museum (United States), Kapelica Gallery (Slovenia), and the Museum of Decorative Arts Dresden (Germany), amongst others. She has been awarded research residencies at institutions such as SymbioticA (Australia) and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Germany). Her work has also been featured in books such as Climates. Habitats. Environments and The Annual of Contemporary Art of China: 2021 Edition. Her practice has been covered by media including Global China Television (China), Elle magazine (United States), Tagesspiegel (Germany), Neural Magazine (Italy), and CLOT Magazine (Europe). In 2022, her piece The Silkworm Project was selected for the Lumen Prize for Art and Technology Hua Awards Shortlist hosted by the Serpentine Gallery (UK).
