Aven-Le Zhou is an artist-scholar whose research and practices examine the sociocultural and ecological dimensions of technological advancements, exploring alternative and relational pathways for technodiversity through interactive art and more-than-human design.

His recent research, From Interactivity to Relationality, critiques the narrowing of “interaction” and “embodiment” within the art-technology nexus. By recentering intercorporeality and introducing post-anthropocentric perspectives on the body, he proposes Relational Embodiment—a framework that extends embodiment beyond anthropocentric perspectives toward the technological, the nonhuman, the ecological, and the planetary. His work foregrounds an urgent call for relational thinking across interactive art and related applied sciences, e.g., AI, robotics, and human–computer interaction.

His artworks have been exhibited internationally at leading institutions and festivals, including Ars Electronica Festival, ISEA Creative Works, Digital Art China Exhibition, Chronus Art Center, Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, and Guangdong Times Museum. His scholarly publications appear in renowned art and technology venues, including Leonardo, SIGGRAPH, and ISEA, as well as HCI venues such as ACM DIS, TEI, and C&C.

Interactive Art and More-than-Human Design

Keywords

1. Relationality — Expanding interactivity in interactive art and interaction design with ethical, affective, and sociocultural relating across human and nonhumans.
2. Relational Embodiment — Extending embodiment beyond the anthropocentrism toward technological, nonhuman, ecological, and planetary scales.
3. Technodiversity — Advocating diversity and plural and hybrid technological futures as an ethical and creative imperative against homogenized AI cultures.
4. Companion Species — Rethinking AI and nonhuman entities as partners in co-evolution, empathy, and care rather than control or alignment.
5. Worlding — Co-constituting worlds through situated, plural, and relational processes of artistic and theoretical practices.

Assistant Professor, Xian Jiao Tong - Liverpool University. 2020 - Present.

Instructor, New York University, Shanghai. 2019 - 2020.

Research Fellow, New York University, Shanghai. 2014 - 2019.

Artist Works with Emerging Technology. Shanghai. 2014 - Present.

IND 211 Electronics for Design

IND 407 Body, Space, and Machines

IND 209 Studio: Concepts and Interaction

IND 118 Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction

[Selected Course at NYU Shanghai: ] Artificial Intelligence Arts, Interactive Machine Learning, etc.

1st prize, Tencent Next Idea Competition.

Winner, Google PoweredByTF 2.0 Challenge.

1st prize, Intel AI On PC Early Innovation.

1st prize, Google Developer Group Shanghai Design Sprint Hackthon.