In Conversation: Mingyong Cheng, Sophia Sun, and Han Zhang on Entanglement, Agency, and the More-Than-Human
- Amy Jiang
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
In the feedback loops of machine learning, certain bodies, cultures, and ways of knowing are made visible, distorted, or erased. Like ghosts—excluded yet ever-present—they haunt the machine. They slip through algorithmic blind spots, bend systems’ logic, and disrupt with glitches and ruptures that unsettle computational control. But ghosts don’t just haunt—they rewire. They assert presence, reframe meaning, and speak in forms the system was never trained to understand. Through cracks in the loop, they reemerge as designers of new imaginaries for themselves and for the communities the system failed to see. Ghosts in the Feedback Loop is a virtual exhibition that invites artists to work inside those cracks—to treat algorithmic systems not as endpoints of automation but as haunted infrastructures alive with memory, loss, and rebellion. This interview is part of TechnoMirage, UAAD’s latest curatorial & publishing project exploring the intersections of artificial intelligence, speculative design, and collective imagination. Emerging from a multi-format event series—including a virtual exhibition, an online panel co-hosted with Parsons, and an IRL gathering of workshops, talks, and performances—the publication extends these dialogues into an archival form.
About the Artists
Learning to Move, Learning to Play, Learning to Animate is an award-winning interdisciplinary performance co-directed by visual artist Mingyong Cheng, composer Han Zhang, and robotic engineer Sophia Sun, featuring performers erika and Yuemeng Gu. Integrating real-time AI, robotics, and biofeedback, the project explores shared agency between humans, machines, and the environment. It received the IEEE TCPAMI Artist Award (CVPR AI Art) and the 2025 Speculative Futures Student Contest award (ISEA x ACM SIGGRAPH). Sponsored by the IDEAS program at UC San Diego, Qualcomm Institute, and supported by the Calit2 AV team.
Q: Could you tell us a bit about your background, and how your work connects to the theme “Ghosts in the Feedback Loop”?
[Mingyong Cheng] I am Mingyong, a new media visual artist and creative technologist, currently completing my PhD in Visual Arts at UC San Diego. My work explores the intersection of generative AI, digital art, and environmental research, rethinking the boundaries between human, machine, and nature. Much of my practice engages AI as a cultural memory system and speculative collaborator, surfacing ecological and cultural presences that are often overlooked or distorted within technological systems.
[Sophia Sun] I am a computer science researcher interested in machine creativity and uncertainty. I am fascinated by how we view and interact with systems that we see as “other” — machines, nature, other cultures — and what that reflects about ourselves.
[Han Zhang] I am a cross-media artist and music technologist. Drawing from my background in both engineering and music, I am fascinated by the ubiquitous interfaces that translate, fluidify, and aggregate our disciplines, intelligences, perceptions, and physical selves. Beyond the material presence of the interface lies an invisible mind or ghost, exerting its dominance across that narrow layer of glass to manipulate its peripheries and shape our visibility. My work often takes the form of interactive sensory installations, cross-media theatrical practices, and improvisatory performances, weaving together translatory effects that evoke a shared understanding of technology, art, and lived human experience.
[All] Learning to Move, Learning to Play, Learning to Animate resonates with Ghosts in the Feedback Loop by foregrounding the signals, movements, and agencies that conventional machine learning overlooks. The performance brings together found-object robots, plant biofeedback, and real-time AI visuals to create encounters where human performers, nonhuman organisms, and synthetic embodiments assert their presence beyond algorithmic classification. In this way, what might appear as noise or absence in the loop becomes a generative force, rewiring perception and opening space for more-than-human intelligences to be seen, felt, and imagined.
Q: How do you perceive AI—as a tool, a collaborator, a medium, a subject, or something else? And how does that shape your artistic process?
[Mingyong]
I perceive AI as a cultural memory system and a speculative collaborator. It is not a neutral tool or passive medium but an active agent that synthesizes, transforms, and reframes historical, ecological, and aesthetic knowledge. In my artistic process, I treat AI models as emergent repositories—repositories that do not store data statically but participate in reconfiguring meaning across time and context. This shapes how I work with generative systems: not to generate novelty for its own sake, but to provoke reflection on what is remembered, what is reconstructed, and what is possible to imagine beyond the boundaries of human perception.
[Han]
We employed AI-powered tools in the creation of this production, but more importantly, we approached AI—alongside sensors, circuits, robots, and other theatrical technologies—as representations of machines and integral components of our world. With this connotation, AI becomes an organic presence in the performance that generates and communicates liveness and meaning. Rather than functioning as a one-way path from control to result, AI becomes a channel through which the bio-information of nature, the thoughts of humans, and the complexity of machines flow and intertwine.
Q: What futures does your featured work gesture toward or warn against? Who do you imagine as your audience, and how do you hope they are impacted?
[Sophia] In our performance “Learning to Move, Learning to Play, Learning to Animate,” we developed a narrative of the “more-than-human world,” a symbiosis of humans, nature, and machines. The performance highlights how alike we all are: the way we move, the way we learn, the way we sound, the way we carry our bodies (or lack of bodies) in the world. Through this multi-sensory experience, we hope to inspire our audience to look beyond a human-centric perspective and discover the planetary intelligence that emerges from our collaboration with nature and technology.
Q: Are there particular communities, histories, or environments your work remains in conversation with? How do those relationships evolve over time?
[Sophia] This work has some roots in the regenerative living solar punk community, which shares with us the vision of building a sustainable future interconnected with nature and community, enabled by technology. The term “more-than-human world” is coined by artist and writer James Bridle in his book Ways of Being. We are glad to see that reflecting on our relationships to nature and AI has become more common in the computer science community, and we will continue to explore this idea with both technologists and artists.
Q: What do you see as the most urgent threats or uncertainties we may face in the coming decade with the rise of AI?
[Mingyong] One of the most urgent uncertainties lies in the collapse of trust—not just in images or information, as with deepfakes, but in perception itself. As generative AI becomes more sophisticated in simulating reality, we risk eroding the boundary between representation and manipulation. This threatens not only truth but also our ability to recognize and value ambiguity, context, and difference. More broadly, I worry about the homogenization of cultural memory. When large models are trained on dominant narratives, they obscure minoritized voices and reinforce systems of exclusion. The danger is not just in what AI generates, but in what it forgets—what it cannot see or chooses not to remember.
Q: Are there any theories, books, or artists you’d like to recommend in your current areas of interest?
[Sophia] Vanessa Rosa (https://va2rosa.com/) is a dear friend of mine and a pioneer in exploring the cyborg nature of humans, physical things, and AI. I highly recommend her work!
[Mingyong] I recommend the artist duo Artificial Nature (https://artificialnature.net/), whose work explores the intersection of AI and ecological systems. At this year’s SIGGRAPH Art Gallery, I experienced their installation We Are Entanglement, which invites participants to become part of an underground ecosystem. Seeing ourselves as roots, fungi, and unseen signals within a shared network was powerful, especially when experienced with others in the space. The piece offers a poetic reflection on mutual dependency and more-than-human intelligence, which resonates with how I think about embodied, collective, and computational forms of entanglement.
[Han] Interspecifics Collective (https://interspecifics.cc/work/) conducts very interesting and experimental projects that also explore art, living organisms, and machine learning. They employ innovative technologies and share highly inspiring ideas in this discourse.
Credits
Co-Directors: Mingyong Cheng, Sophia Sun, Han Zhang
Performers: Yuemeng Gu, erika
Robotic Engineer: Sophia Sun
Visual Artist: Mingyong Cheng
Composer: Han Zhang
Lighting Engineer: Zehao Wang, Han Zhang
Video Editor: Yuemeng GuPost Production Coordinator: Mingyong Cheng
Technical & Installation Support: Yifan Guo, Ke Li, Zehao Wang, Zetao Yu
Special thanks to Palka Puri for plant support, Robert Twomey for valuable paper feedback, the Initiative for Digital Exploration of Arts and Sciences (IDEAS) program at the University of California San Diego and Qualcomm Institute for sponsoring this project, and the AV team from the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) for installation and media support.
Lead Editor: Amy Xiaofan Jiang
Assistant Editor: Paridhi Garg
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