In Conversation: Shihan on entanglements of climate change, invasive species, and algorithmic intelligence
- Amy Jiang
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
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
Shihan Zhang is an award-winning design futurist passionate about challenging cultural stereotypes and social preconceptions through futuring and simulations. Her work has been recognized by the FastCo. Innovation by Design Awards, WIRED Creative Hack Award, International Design Excellence Awards, Core77 Design Award, Falling Walls Science, Lumen Prize Futures Award, and others. She has also exhibited worldwide at the Museum of Design Atlanta, Toronto Design Week, New INC, Stanford University, IFTF Forecast Summit, and more.
Q: Could you tell us a bit about your background, and how your work connects to the theme “Ghosts in the Feedback Loop”?
Shihan: My background sits at the intersection of speculative design, ecology, and emerging technologies. Much of my work asks how we can use design not only to visualize possible futures but also to challenge the systems that shape them. With Econut, I approached food as both a material and symbolic site for intervention, rethinking how invasive species—often invisible or vilified in ecological discourse—could be reframed as agents in reshaping food culture.
This connects closely to Ghosts in the Feedback Loop. Invasive species themselves are ecological “ghosts”: they slip into ecosystems through human-driven disruptions, become hyper-visible as threats, yet are rarely considered collaborators in imagining futures. By engaging AI as a co-creator, Econut also surfaces the ghosts within algorithmic processes—biases in what the system “sees,” or doesn’t. In asking AI to reimagine the form of a snack based on invasive morphologies, I’m interested in how the machine bends or glitches when confronted with inputs outside its normative training.
In many ways, Econut brings together two hauntings—the spectral presence of invasive species in disrupted ecologies, and the spectral biases and blind spots in AI systems. By staging them together in food, something as intimate and cultural as eating, the project asks: what other futures could emerge if we learned to listen to these ghosts rather than erase them?
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?
Shihan: I perceive AI as a new kind of “oil, engine, internet.” Like these past infrastructures, it can be a tool, a collaborator, and a medium for human creativity—yet it is also more intangible, an invisible matter shaping our world in less perceptible ways.
In the context of Post-Natural Interventions, I approached AI not only as a generative design partner but also as a speculative actor—its decisions and aesthetics becoming a lens through which to question nonhuman authorship and responsibility. This project is, in part, an experiment in “cooking” with AI: treating the machine not only as a form-finding collaborator but also as a designer of taste, shaping how we imagine, visualize, and even flavor futures that extend beyond the human.
Ziwei: As I work with language and multimodal models, their slowness, repetitions, and layered logic reveal a narrative quality, almost like unfolding a story. My engagement lies in this tension: embracing the generative creativity of AI while confronting its biased blind spots, making visible how technology both enables and unsettles human expression, and how its capacity to scale expands the experience of play and discovery.
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?
Shihan: Econut explores how emerging technologies—particularly generative AI—can reframe ecological disruption not as an endpoint, but as a site for speculative intervention.
The project grows out of my ongoing investigation into the entanglements of climate change, invasive species, and algorithmic intelligence. It gestures toward a future where AI is not only a monitoring tool, but also a collaborator in reimagining how we respond—through design, storytelling, and even eating. By engaging generative AI as both a form-finding partner and a taste designer, Econut experiments with how machines might help us reimagine not only the look and feel of food, but also the symbolic and sensory languages of sustenance itself. The project develops donut-shaped snack concepts inspired by the anatomy of invasive species, transforming ecological threats into aesthetic and edible opportunities. These forms are both symbolic and speculative: they embody the provocation of what it might mean to “eat our way through” the climate crisis, guided by machines.
I imagine the audience as spanning multiple communities—designers, technologists, ecologists, and the general public—anyone invested in the intertwined futures of food, environment, and technology. My hope is to spark curiosity and discomfort in equal measure: to invite people to question the assumptions built into our technologies, to see invasive species through a different cultural lens, and to imagine how unlikely collaborations—with machines and with nonhuman ecologies—might shape the futures of what and how we eat.
Ziwei: My practice haunts systems by exposing the cracks in algorithmic language. Persistent patterns shaped by the model’s own logic cannot simply be erased. In this process, the tool shows its own attitude, turning creation into a dialogue, even a subtle competition, with the machine’s ghostly presence. I treat glitches, errors, and ghostly residues not as failures, but as openings for new narratives. Through these fragments, I seek to rewrite dominant imaginaries and propose alternative ways of telling and remembering.
Q: Are there particular communities, histories, or environments your work remains in conversation with? How do those relationships evolve over time?
Shihan: My work is in conversation with shifting ecologies, food cultures, and the stories of displacement that run through both. Having lived between different places, I’ve become very aware of how food carries memory, migration, and identity—and how it changes when environments change. With Econut, I was drawn to invasive species because they hold layered histories: they often arrive through colonial trade, migration, or accident, and then are cast as unwanted outsiders. I see parallels between these ecological “ghosts” and human narratives of exclusion, and I’m interested in reframing them—not only as threats, but as materials for new cultural imaginaries, especially through food.
At the same time, I’m in dialogue with communities experimenting at the intersection of food, ecology, and technology—scientists and artists who are rethinking what sustenance means in the context of climate change. These relationships are never static. They shift as invasive species spread to new regions, as tastes evolve, and as tools like AI change in what they can or cannot see. My role as a speculative designer is less about fixing these systems than about staying with their transformations—holding space for overlooked narratives and ecologies to resurface, and using design as a bridge to translate those ghosts into forms we can see, taste, and reflect on together.
Q: What do you see as the most urgent threats or uncertainties we may face in the coming decade with the rise of AI?
Shihan: Personally, I believe the most urgent threat lies in our imagination—and in the values we choose to embed in AI. The value I carry most in my practice is a “more-than-human” perspective, which asks us to consider ecologies, species, and systems beyond ourselves. With this in mind, I see the rise of AI not only as a risk but also as a profound opportunity: a chance to reframe our social norms and expand the possibilities of how we live, design, and relate to the world.
Ziwei: One of the biggest uncertainties is how AI-driven automation and mass production will change the way we tell stories. On the one hand, it opens up exciting new possibilities; on the other, it risks creating fatigue as repeated patterns and aesthetics lose their freshness. As Wittgenstein wrote, “the meaning of a word is its use in the language.” If our forms of life are increasingly expressed through various forms of AI-generated content, the difficult question is: how much space will be left for human ways of expression and experience?
Q: Are there any theories, books, or artists you’d like to recommend in your current areas of interest?
Yes. I’m deeply interested in biodesign and “more-than-human–centered” approaches. There are many inspiring voices in this space—for example, the artist Ani Liu. My own practice sits within speculative design, and there are wonderful books that continue to shape this field, such as my mentor’s recent publication Not Here, Not Now. I also frequently look to artists and studios pushing these ideas forward, including one of my favorites, Superflux Studio.
For foresight and futures strategy, I draw from vibrant communities like The Near Future Laboratory, which has produced excellent toolkits and published works. Books I often recommend include Making Futures Work by Phil Balagtas and Social Dreaming Through Design by Masaki Iwabuchi, in which I was honored to have some of my own work included.
Lead Editor: Amy Xiaofan Jiang
Assistant Editor: Paridhi Garg
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