Dr. Suk Kyoung Choi is an interdisciplinary artist and teacher whose PhD research examined how computational mediation of human creative expression contributes to the transformation of embodied metaphor in digital culture. Using artificial intelligence, Choi examined the displacement of embodiment by technology and the implications of that displacement for the development of human-centered AI.

As an artist, Choi started with traditional media, painting, sculpting, printmaking, but soon became a pioneer in digital media (with work in international exhibitions) and now works at the forefront of AI art and aesthetics. She is an accomplished artist and critical theorist and uniquely situates a conceptual standpoint grounded in cognitive science to study AI development expressed partially as art-as-research.

Choi received a SSHRC Insight grant with her supervisor, which was instrumental in supporting research in artificially intelligent aesthetics and resulted in several peer-reviewed publications in top journals and conference presentations.

Choi’s supervisor, Dr. Steve DiPaola says that, “Suk Kyoung has proven herself to be a rare combination of practicing media artist, AI conceptual theorist and cognitive psychology researcher, creating aesthetic works of art while at the same time, with scientific rigor, studying embodied cognition in the art making process through empirical quantitative studies.”

Choi credits her supervisor and the creative synergy of SFU’s SIAT research culture for a transformative and stimulating graduate experience that has contributed to a new field of study centered in research-creation and critically informative upon future human-AI interaction and experience design.

Choi currently collaborates with Steve DiPaola’s iViz lab at SFU as a postdoctoral researcher in the exploratory development of AI-based tools to model and transform representations of human affect.