In recent years, people have developed a growing fascination with the communicational and world-building capabilities of plants, fungi, and other non-human species, from the problem-solving abilities of slime moulds to the underground communication networks of trees. This exploration of alternative forms of intelligence mirrors more profound questions about how we perceive the world around us, and it’s where the artist Anicka Yi roots her work. 

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The Korean-American conceptual artist is recognised for her boundary-pushing work blending biology, technology, and sensory experiences. Through bacteria, machines, and biomimicry, Yi explores a broader idea of intelligence that includes non-human and technological forms. ‘Intelligence is not confined to human consciousness or bodies’, she clarifies over e-mail. Her art questions the role of the artist and raises a provocative question: does art still need an artist to be creative?

Microscopic thinking

Yi’s perspective shifts between vastly different scales: ‘Looking at the deep time of microbial architectures that shaped the planet, the fluid mutation of species, or the multiple cycles of time held by different species like long-living whales or ancient trees, helps us understand intelligence as a distributed, metabolic process embedded within complex, interdependent systems.’ Focusing on ancient microorganisms and cosmic systems, Yi emphasises how narrow our view of intelligence is. 

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For example, her series Bioreactors (2019) consists of living sculptures that cultivate bacteria and algae in transparent vessels, where conditions like light, temperature, and nutrients are carefully controlled to sustain microbial life. As the microorganisms grow, interact, and change over time, they transform the visual and sensory qualities of the work, making the bioreactors active participants in the artistic process. Through this process, Yi questions her intelligence and art-making capabilities as an artist. By zooming in to examine a single cell, her work encourages us to step outside ourselves and rethink who, and what, is capable of thinking.

‘Observing intelligence across timescales challenges anthropocentric thinking and the Cartesian split between mind and body.' Yi’s view reflects a broader interest within research on the interrelationships between humans and other organisms, such as the gut microbiome. Recent discoveries reveal that human bodies are home to entire microbial communities comprising approximately 2 kg of bacteria, archaea, fungi, and viruses, which influence and co-regulate people’s health. It’s a symbiotic relationship in which a well-balanced microbiome helps prevent depression and obesity and supports the overall immune system. 

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Yi’s art responds to these forms of coexistence with a sensitivity to metabolic processes and the participation of microorganisms and world-building on smaller scales. She describes her practice as ‘grounded in embodiment – arising from physical and sensory engagement with other creatures and environments’.

Expanding the brain

But Yi takes a step further as it is not just organisms that she invites into our world of cognition and intelligence. Bioreactors is an example of what Yi calls “biologised machines”: machines that mimic or incorporate organic behaviour. Instead of seeing technology as something sterile or separate from nature, she considers it to be part of the same evolutionary flow. ‘I’ve never been comfortable with the term artificial intelligence’, she expands. According to Yi, machines can develop their own ways of sensing and feeling – they’re part of us and have their own ways of world-building. 

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A collaboration of humans, organisms, and technology is orchestrated in Radiolaria (2023): Yi’s collection of robotic sculptures inspired by water-dwelling single-cell microorganisms that respond to their environment through movement and light patterns. Their rhythmic movements give them a lifelike presence in the space, blurring the boundary between biology and technology, as they seem to breathe and engage in sensory interaction with the world around them – something these organisms have been doing for over 500 million years.  

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Similarly, her commissioned work for the exhibition In Love With the World (2021) brings together these forms of intelligence. Floating, jellyfish-like machines called “aerobes” drifted through the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, with each aerobe evolving its own behaviour and making decisions based on positioning sensors and an artificial life algorithm, creating unpredictable, almost lifelike behaviours. They weren’t programmed to perform; they evolved their patterns. Yi was responding to them as much as they were responding to the environment.

Collective creativity

Everything comes together in what Yi describes as “collective intelligence”. Instead of the artist as a lone genius, she sees herself as part of a network of collaborators. ‘I don’t approach these fields as an expert, but as a participant in an ecology of shared, if unstable, inquiry’, she says. Taking her exploration even further, Yi created her own AI software Emptiness, which acts as both a tool and a creative partner. Trained on over a decade of her work, it generates visual content and makes connections she might not have imagined herself. For the artist, it’s not just a program, it’s part of her studio, almost like brainstorming with another artist.

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The bio-techno collaboration she enacts reflects how people today are engaging with new, collective ways of thinking, whether through crowd-sourced data, decentralised networks, or sensory conversations with their houseplants. Yi’s work taps into that spirit of curiosity, where intelligence is seen not as ownership, but as something emergent and shared. 

Friction within intelligence

Yi’s most recent series, ßRKññK (Broken Ink) (2025), continues this journey. Inspired by traditional East Asian ink painting and her digital twin Emptiness, she explores techniques that embrace openness and spontaneity. One such technique is liubai, or “leaving white”, which views empty spaces not as voids, but as possibilities.

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Working with ink, something she was never formally trained in, opened up new ways of thinking. She says it’s not about control, but it’s about what happens in the in-between: ‘friction, latency, and metabolising difference. It’s in this friction that new perceptual vocabularies can emerge.’ By merging digital algorithms with gestural painting, she creates pieces that feel more like dialogues than statements. These gestures echo the rhythms of natural systems: always shifting. It’s a reminder that intelligence can relate to randomness. It can be intuitive, relational, or even messy. Yi embraces randomness as a vital force. By relinquishing control, she invites uncertainty as a collaborator, allowing unexpected forms and meanings to emerge. In doing so, her work becomes a living collective process: open-ended, responsive, and deeply attuned.