Ker Chen
NEED UPDATE
Sep 18, 2025
Hi Ker! Excited to have you today. Can you share a little about your background as an artist?
My creative background began with painting and writing. Since childhood, I have practiced drawing constantly—sometimes images from dreams, sometimes reconstructed fragments of memory. Writing was equally important: I often revisited past experiences and rewrote them through imagination and metaphor, turning memory into a fluid narrative that blurred reality and fiction. These two practices—painting and writing—were the foundations of my early creative life.
Later, when I encountered new media, I realized it offered a more expansive way of storytelling. Programming and 3D tools opened another dimension, allowing me to transform those narratives into immersive, shifting forms. During and after my undergraduate years, I also worked extensively in live events, especially live music. I deeply enjoyed creating physical environments—arranging sound, light, and stage installations—and witnessing how audiences reacted in real time. These experiences shaped how I understand art today: as something that moves between imagination, technology, and the shared presence of audiences in physical space.
My creative background began with painting and writing. Since childhood, I have practiced drawing constantly—sometimes images from dreams, sometimes reconstructed fragments of memory. Writing was equally important: I often revisited past experiences and rewrote them through imagination and metaphor, turning memory into a fluid narrative that blurred reality and fiction. These two practices—painting and writing—were the foundations of my early creative life.
Later, when I encountered new media, I realized it offered a more expansive way of storytelling. Programming and 3D tools opened another dimension, allowing me to transform those narratives into immersive, shifting forms. During and after my undergraduate years, I also worked extensively in live events, especially live music. I deeply enjoyed creating physical environments—arranging sound, light, and stage installations—and witnessing how audiences reacted in real time. These experiences shaped how I understand art today: as something that moves between imagination, technology, and the shared presence of audiences in physical space.
Sounds like you often combine performance, installation, and digital layering into your work. Could you talk more about that?
For me, different media are all creative tools—each one is a way of transmitting and transforming information. My practice is not defined by one medium, but by how I use these tools together to construct a space, or an energy field, where audiences can step inside and feel.
I work across visual, sonic, and interactive layers, weaving them to create environments charged with sensation. Recently, I have become especially interested in exploring intangible concepts: invisible emotions, energies, spiritual presences, or even molecular processes that cannot be perceived by the eye. I see my practice as a way of giving form to these unseen forces and inviting audiences to encounter them directly.
I am sure you encounter different tools as your work spans across so many media. What tools or software are central to your practice right now?
Real-time engines such as Unreal Engine and TouchDesigner are central to my practice. They allow me to rapidly prototype, test ideas, and build interactive live environments where I can immediately observe audience responses. This immediacy is crucial, helping me refine my work quickly and fluidly.
I have also been deeply engaged with AI-based tools. For example, I often use ComfyUI and train my own LoRAs. What fascinates me is how AI’s processes resemble—but do not replicate—human thought. Unlike traditional 3D tools, where each step is predictable, AI introduces surprise and unpredictability. Even when I set parameters, the outcomes often diverge from my expectations. I value this as a kind of collaboration: AI becomes a creative partner, generating unexpected results that help me rethink my creative process and open new directions I couldn’t arrive at alone.
Are there any concepts that are essential to your practice?
Several recurring concepts are essential to my practice. One is the relationship between control and chaos—how we live between holding on and letting go. Another is the dialogue between body and environment: turning inward to explore perception through the body, and outward to examine the world around us. I am also drawn to invisible forces—emotions, energies, and phenomena that cannot be seen but profoundly shape our experiences.
These themes are deeply tied to my own growth and emotional history. Making art is both a creative act and a healing process—it allows me to process memory, emotion, and uncertainty, while also constructing a personal worldview. At the same time, I hope my explorations resonate with others. Even if my work doesn’t provide clear answers, I want it to create recognition—that they are not alone in their questions or struggles. For me, working with these concepts is meaningful because it connects the personal with the collective, and it reminds us that invisible struggles are shared.
Could you share a project that is meaningful to you?
One project that is especially meaningful to me is Hold On No More. It is an interdisciplinary, evolving work that combines lecture, performance, sound, AI, and real-time media to explore the tension between the visible and invisible, the controlled and uncontrollable. It bridges digital and physical space, sound and memory, asking where perception ends and meaning begins.
The project began during the Hybrid Arts Lab Residency at Theater Mitu, where it developed through performance, installation, and research into embodied perception. Over time, Hold On No More has expanded into an investigation of:
- Memory as a Fluid Construct — how recollection shapes perception but also distorts, fades, or regenerates.
- Bodily Awareness & the Unconscious — the gap between what we control and what controls us.
- Chaos & Control — the body as both vessel and site of disruption.
- Sound, Language & Perception — how sound transforms memory, and how AI destabilizes language.
- Scientific & Poetic Experimentation — using chemistry, biology, and technology as tools of storytelling.
In 2024, it was presented as a 10-minute lecture performance at the UAAD Festival and ¡Oye! Avant Garde Night, reimagining the lecture format through chemistry experiments, projections, desktop cameras, and live sound. Rather than a linear narrative, it created a fragmented, sensory environment where the invisible could be felt. The installation version, developed at Theater Mitu, expanded this into an immersive environment, deconstructing text, visuals, and sound so audiences could navigate the themes spatially.
For me, Hold On No More is both artistic and deeply personal: a way of processing memory and uncertainty, while also inviting audiences into that shared space of questioning.
Many of your works reimagine the body in fragmented or extended forms. What draws you to this exploration of the body as both subject and medium?
For me, the body is both a medium of perception and an archive of experience. It is the first place where I gather data from the world, and I often use my own body as a fieldwork tool—experiencing, sensing, and testing ideas directly through it. Since much of my work is rooted in personal memory, the body becomes a repository for storing and processing these histories.
When the body is digitized, I see it as a form of uploading—translating embodied information into another medium. This translation allows me to explore how physical experience can be extended, fragmented, or reconfigured. In projects like Hold On No More and Hunting, the body becomes both vessel and subject: simultaneously personal and universal, disrupted and reimagined through technology.
What is a challenge you’ve faced in bringing experimental projects to life, and how did you navigate it?
One of the greatest challenges is bringing complex and experimental ideas into reality within limited time and resources. Often the technology is unstable, or the outcomes unpredictable. My way of navigating this is through rapid iteration and improvisation—building quick prototypes, staying open to surprises, and allowing failure to become part of the process. Collaboration is equally important: working across disciplines often reveals solutions and transforms constraints into creative opportunities.
How has your relationship wih the audience changed as your work shifts between digital and in-person?
For me, the audience has always been part of the work itself. I don’t see myself as creating objects, but as shaping experiences that only exist in relation to the time, space, and people present. Each audience member becomes part of the environment.
When I create installations, I carefully design how audiences enter, where their touchpoints are, and how they move in relation to one another. These choices already shape the experience. In the future, I am interested in integrating audience data into the work—such as emotions, immediate responses, or even biological signals. In this way, the audience not only inhabits the space but also co-creates the energy field of the work.
Are there digital platforms, engines, or experimental tools you are eager to explore next?
I am eager to continue exploring AI-driven video generation, real-time engines, and multi-screen immersive environments. I am especially interested in how audience data can be integrated into live systems, making performances that evolve dynamically. I see these directions as ways to blur the boundaries between the physical and the digital, and to experiment with new forms of collective storytelling.