Bug Dystopia | 2025 | Beile Hu | China

Bug Dystopia (2025) extends the premise of Delirium ex Machina by exploring how machinic delirium, rather than divine intervention, generates new forms of feeling. The video is an AI–human collaboration that stages a cross-species conversation among humans, the ramie moth, and artificial intelligence. “Bug” refers both to the moth and to systemic failure, suggesting that error becomes a site of invention. The moth repeatedly collides with luminous urban structures, misled by its sensory intelligence and trapped in environments shaped by human design. Using AI-generated voice, on-site audio recordings, and 3D scans, the work constructs an alternative navigational field where the moth’s disorientation intersects with the emotional hallucinations of algorithms. Is a synthesized survival signal more artificial than the sound of a moth striking glass? Ultimately, Bug Dystopia invites viewers to consider how empathy circulates when human, nonhuman, and machinic forms of perception collapse into a shared and unfolding delirium in our contemporary moment.

ARTIST BIO
Beile Hu is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher of performance, sound, and moving images. Expanding to include the entangled relationships between trees, soil, and architecture within the urban ecology, their aim is to explore the potential of the human body as a sensor that can be transformed through soundscapes and its intimate interactions with non-human entities. Beile is currently finishing up MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (U.S.) with the Visionary Scholars Award. Previously, she received a BA in International Communication Studies from University of Nottingham (U.K.). They have exhibited and performed internationally, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (Chicago, U.S.), Historic Black Mountain College (North Carolina, U.S.), Asian Improv aRts Midwest (Chicago, U.S.), Fried Fruit Art Space (Wilmington, U.S.), Reflejo de Urbe a Pie (Caguas, Puerto Rico), and Ivory Gallery (Shanghai, China).

EXHIBITION: www.aisthesislab.art