Shanghai-based artist Vivian Xu introduces her Silkworm Project in dialogue with Lisa Onaga. The project explores the possibilities of using silkworms to design a series of hybrid biomass machines capable of producing self-organized flat and spatial silk structures. In her work Xu is interested in how far the behavior of insects can serve as a foundation for technological design. She develops cybernetic machines based on both biological and computer-controlled logic. The Silkworm Project is the first of a series titled the Insect Trilogy, which is still under development, in which she examines the behavior of ants, bees, and silkworms in order to take this into account in the design of work machines.

About Vivian Xu

Vivian Xu is a media artist and researcher from Beijing, currently based in Shanghai. In 2013, she received her MFA in Design and Technology at Parsons the New School for Design. She is an independent artist. Her work explores the boundaries between bio and electronic media in creating new forms of machine logic, life and sensory systems, and often take the form of object, installation and/or wearable. She has shown, lectured, and performed at various institutions in China, the US, Germany, and Australia, including the National Art Museum of China (Beijing), the Central Academy of Fine Art (Beijing), the China Academy of Art (Hangzhou), the Chronus Art Center (Shanghai), the Rockbund Museum (Shanghai), the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra (Shanghai), the New York Science Museum (New York), Gallery Ho (New York), Art Laboratory Berlin (Berlin), and SymbioticA at University of Western Australia (Perth). Vivian co-founded Dogma Lab, a trans-disciplinary design lab in Shanghai that is dedicated to creating experimental research at the intersection of design, technology, art and science. As an artist-in-residence at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (May-Aug. 2019), Vivian develops an artist book of her bio machine art series The Silkworm Project. This work will be presented at Art Laboratory Berlin.

About the Series

Art Laboratory Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) collaborate together through a four-month research stay in Berlin by Vivian Xu. Between May and August 2019, Vivian Xu will pursue her artistic research at MPIWG and ALB. The exhibition and a workshop on sericulture by Vivian Xu will provide the public with insights into this fascinating long-term project.