TengChao ZhouPhD student
TengChao is a practice-based PhD student at SensiLab under the supervision of Dr Xavier Ho and Prof Jon McCormack. Primarily identifying as a new media artist or computer artist, he creates game-based and interactive art that explores past and present gay cultures from around the world. His work blurs the boundaries between game design and interactive art. He is also interested in new artistic experiences that AI can offer. His creative work has been exhibited in Los Angeles, Guangzhou, and Rotterdam.
TengChao grew up in southern China and completed an undergraduate degree at New York University (NYU), then a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where — also as a summer session lecturer — he led a class on interactive art and design in the Design Media Arts department.
In 2024, he presented a paper at ACM SIGGRAPH in Denver titled: “Southern Wind Algorist: Merging Nine Algorithms with Nine Gay Stories Written in Classical Chinese.” A two-month international art residency in Rotterdam led to the creation of a digitally fabricated, nature-inspired sculpture that explored and revealed the inner workings of generative AI. A short paper analysing the artwork was presented at the Art Machines 2 symposium organised by the City University of Hong Kong.
At Monash, TengChao’s research focuses on conducting experiments to merge game design, CreativeAI, and pre-modern gay Chinese culture while documenting the findings through writing.