Art After the Algorithm: Creation, Space, and the New Cultural Infrastructure

The Beijing edition of ATC Forum began with Wang Yuyang’s solo exhibition Chaosmosis and examined how algorithms are reshaping artistic practice, spatial experience, and cultural institutions.

On 21 March 2026, the Beijing edition of ATC Forum took place at 798CUBE under the title Art After the Algorithm: Creation, Space, and New Cultural Infrastructure. Moderated by Zhang Chen, the forum brought together artists, architects, curators, and institutional leaders to consider how technology is shifting from an external instrument to an environment within which art and society increasingly operate.

The forum opened with a collective response to Wang Yuyang’s solo exhibition Chaosmosis. Drawing on the exhibition, its individual works, and the artist’s wider practice, the speakers reflected on the relationships among algorithms, material systems, living organisms, and technological environments. The exhibition served as a shared point of departure for examining how artistic agency and judgment might be maintained under rapidly changing technological conditions.

The first roundtable focused on creation, space, and the art-tech ecosystem. Artist Wang Yuyang, Roh Soh Yeong, Director of Art Center Nabi, and architect-curator John C.H. Lin approached the subject through artistic practice, institutional operation, and spatial production.

As generative models produce images at increasing speed, code becomes a creative language, and audience data begins to affect the form of artworks, the role of the artist extends beyond individual expression. It increasingly involves selecting, organizing, and critically engaging with technological systems. Programmability can expand artistic freedom, but it can also introduce new forms of discipline and standardization. Art and architectural education must therefore reconsider which abilities remain essential when technical tools change faster than pedagogical structures.

Space formed another central strand of the discussion. Physical environments and digital interfaces are becoming increasingly intertwined, extending the sites of artistic production beyond the gallery into data streams, network protocols, and mixed realities. Architecture may no longer function only as a container. It can become responsive, generative, and involved in shaping the encounter with art.

This shift also creates tension between the apparent universality of algorithms and the specificity of place. As computational systems influence space and everyday life, architectural and cultural practice must continue to address climate, local knowledge, collective memory, social relations, and embodied experience. These conditions cannot be reduced to data without losing part of their cultural meaning.

The second roundtable turned toward museums, institutions, and global networks. Hera Lee, Executive Director of 798CUBE, Suh Jinsuk, Director of Busan Museum of Art, and architect-curator Stefano Rabolli Pansera considered how cultural infrastructure might respond to artistic practices that are generative, networked, participatory, and frequently immaterial.

Technological artworks may exist as code, data, digital files, or events that unfold across different times and locations. They cannot always be accommodated by established models of collecting and display. Museums may therefore need to preserve algorithms, technical conditions, documentation, and the means through which a work can be reactivated. This requires new approaches to conservation, archives, institutional responsibility, and public access.

The forum also situated the art-tech ecosystem within East Asian and international networks. Beijing, Seoul, Busan, and Bangkok operate through distinct technological industries, cultural policies, and institutional histories. These differences create opportunities for collaboration, but they also challenge the assumption that technological art should be interpreted primarily through European and North American frameworks.

Local traditions, collective memory, and social structures continue to influence how technology is developed and understood. The discussion therefore considered how Asian institutions might build networks that preserve regional differences while supporting transnational exchange. It also questioned whether technology genuinely decentralizes the cultural field or simply produces new centres of influence.

Within this context, cultural infrastructure may no longer be defined only as a building. It may also consist of institutional partnerships, systems of exchange, digital archives, protocols, and long-term networks connecting artists, publics, technologies, and cities. The Beijing forum asked how such an ecosystem could support new artistic practices while safeguarding public value, human agency, and cultural difference in the age after the algorithm.

Initiating Unit: Robb Report China
Organizers: Faculty of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong, Institute of Science and Technology for Art, Central Academy of Fine Arts, 798 CUBE
Co-organizers: Asia-Pacific Youth Innovation Art Committee, New Media Arts Foundation, COLLECTA
Moderator: Chen Zhang
Panelists: Hera Lee, Yuyang Wang, John C.H. Lin, Roh Soh Yeong, Suh Jin Suk, Stefano Rabolli Pansera
Location: 798CUBE

Wang Yuyang, Collapse, installation view of Chaosmosis, 798CUBE, Beijing

Wang Yuyang, Golem, installation view of Chaosmosis, 798CUBE, Beijing

Wang Yuyang, Unnameable, installation view of Chaosmosis, 798CUBE, Beijing

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