Lucy Siyao Liu (she/her) is an artist and designer based in New York.
Her work explores human systems devised in the past and present to comprehend scales of environment and ecology. She is the director of studio PROPS.SUPPLY and PROPS PAPER, a publication on image culture and technology. She researches, writes, and teaches topics on architecture, computational design, imaging technologies and machine learning. Liu received a post-professional research degree in architectural design from MIT. She is a member of Soft Surplus, an art, technology and design collective, as well as its creative agency, Surplus+. Run your fingers through this cold stream, welcome to the flow ~
Education
2017 Master of Science in Architecture Studies, MIT Department of Architecture.
2015 Bachelor of Fine Art and Bachelor of Architecture, Rhode Island School of Design.
Writing + Publications
2021 (Forthcoming) ESP Cultural Magazine [JP],“Thinking Through Clouds” by Zhenzhen Qi.
2021 “A Place for Relating to Water” Are.na Annual Tending edited by Meg Miller.
2020 SO–IL – Unfinished Business. a+u 2020:11
2020 Atlas of Anomalous AI. Ignota Books, Edited by Ben Vickers & K Allado-McDowell.
2020 Mud Muses: A Rant About Technology, Koenig Books, Edited by Lars Bang Larsen.
2019 Art in America, Lucy Siyao Liu and Tung-Hui Hu on the History of Clouds in Art and Computing, interview by Emily Watlington.
2019 The Forumist, Art and the Machine.
2019 New York Tech Zine Fair, Soft Surplus on art-washing, social technologies and friendship by Neta Bomani
2018 How Do You Use The Internet Mindfully? Edited by Willa Köerner
2018 The Creative Independent, Before Code, Beyond Speech
2018 It's Nice That, PROPS Paper by Ruby Boddington
2018 Metropolis Magazine, Can You Teach Good Design on a Social Media Network? Interview by Audrey Gray
2018 Yale Paprika! 4-07 An Image for the Present, Thoughts in “To Imagine,” Into the Universe of Technical Images (Electronic Mediations) by Vilém Flusser
2017 Design Indaba, What craft lies behind image-making? by Emily Uys
Exhibitions
2019 Moderna Museet, Mud Muses - A Rant on Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.
2019 Skógarnytjar (e.forest utility). Collaboration between Björn Steinar and The Icelandic Forest Service, Reykjavík, Iceland.
2018 Offerings, Bushwick Open Studios, Brooklyn, US.
2016 Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Drum Like Clouds screening, Cambridge, US.
2016 DRAWInternational, Open Studio, Caylus, France.
2016 MIT Keller Gallery, Landlines: Drawing Terrain, Cambridge, US.
2014 China Central Academy of Fine Arts, Wei, Beijing.
2013 Beijing Design Week, Metahutongs, Beijing.
Teaching + Lectures
2021 RISD Experimental Foundation Studies: Spatial Dynamics
2020 RISD Computation, Technology & Culture Concentration, Drawing Interactions, course
2019 Parsons New School of Design, Communications Design: CURRENTS - Staging Practice with PROPS, course with Matthew Bohne
2019 Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Department of Architecture, Architectural Analysis, course
2019 RISD Experimental Foundation Studies: Spatial Dynamics - Formwork/Falsework
2019 RISD Experimental Foundation Studies: Drawing - Orthographies
2018 Hacking Arts, MIT Media Lab, Art and AI, panel discussion
2018 MIT Department of Architecture, Orthographies: New Kinds of Drawings and New Kinds of Things, course
2018 Kirkland Gallery & Harvard GSD, “To Draw a Line: Perspectives on Inscription and Erasure” Symposium, Feet on the Ground, Head in the Clouds, presentation
2018 RISD Department of Architecture, Architectural Projections, course
2018 RISD Department of Architecture, Making of Design Principles, course
2017 Dutch Design Week, Antenna Conference, PROPS Paper, presentation
2017 MIT Art, Culture and Technology Orthographies: Drawing Operations, course
2016 Ashmolean Museum at University of Oxford, Image as Vortex Conference The Angling Islands: Drawing Terrain presentation
2016 MIT Drawing Machines Workshop, Composing Line(s): Drawings of another Nature, lecture