Critial Review with Lili Shen
- luminoirart
- Dec 11, 2025
- 4 min read
Written by Meike Brunkhorst Lili Shen is a London-based Chinese artist whose postgraduate course at the University of the Arts London was overshadowed by the national lockdown in 2020. She responded to the negative emotional effects of enforced and prolonged isolation with an interactive game that applies technology to encourage healing through empathy and physical movement. Beyond Isolation is an early iteration of Shen’s interest in the intersection between human emotion and digital codes. The roles in the mini-game were directly informed by the artist’s direct environment, roles and functions modelled on her professor, flatmate and colleague and their respective coping mechanisms.
In an era when social interactions and relationships are increasingly conducted online, Lili Shen explores the effects technology has on intimacy and identity. For the interactive installation Behind the Masks (2025) she identified six sets of corresponding metaphors to illustrate a simplified psychological profile based on the dynamics that define most relationships, whether amongst children and family or friends, to strangers or lovers. Participants are invited to select from pairs of masks that visualise behavioural patterns ranging from control and submission, protective armour and vulnerability, to insecurities obscured by showing off or by people-pleasing behaviour.
Each set is made up of alluring imagery, ranging from cute bunnies and camp dolls to darker but equally beguiling hearts covered in thorns or teeth adorned with jewellery. As they select, switch and reject the masks which appear as visual overlays, participants are no longer just observers but performers who reveal layers of individual and cultural conditioning, subtly reminding viewers of the paradox of intimacy mediated and observed by artificial intelligence. Not only are we used to hiding behind avatars and filters on social media, but people are increasingly turning to AI for relationship advice or trusting ChatGPT more than a certified therapist.
At the core of Lili Shen’s practice are the physical and mental benefits of sleep, movement and dreams. A substantial body of her work is based on physiological signals like heartbeat and skin response that are captured and mapped before being transformed to create immersive environments. These express states of unrest and unease, recovery and calm as abstract audio-visual patterns. Using a set of rules based on four colours, Rhythms of Sleep (2024) exposes the effects of sleep deprivation and digital exhaustion affecting societies focused on machine-driven efficiency and productivity, rather than natural bio rhythms.
AI models and programming languages are constantly evolving and since graduation Lili Shen has been refining her skills via YouTube tutorials. Proficiency in Stream Diffusion and TouchDesigner enables her to turn the data sets into increasingly dynamic visuals. Noosphere (2025) saw a move from physical states of sleep to expanded visual dreamscapes. The project takes its name from the philosophical term for the third stage of Earth’s development, representing the collective mind, with the geosphere describing the physical basics of rock, water and air, and the biosphere all life.
Notions of memory affecting society that informed the concept of Behind the Mask come into play again here, following the artist’s research into the intersection of subconscious perception and speculative technology by connecting memories with premonitions of the future. Placed into context from a European perspective, they follow Jung’s theories of dreams tapping into the personal and collective unconscious and their potential to not just uncover the past but also reveal future patterns – by feeding into the noosphere’s shared mind.
For Noosphere II Collective Veil (2025) the subconscious signals are expanded from abstract patterns to include AI-generated shapes and objects that hint at universally recognised dream symbols. Shadows of animals, fragments of buildings, trains moving through waves and clouds. A clockface reminiscent of Salvador Dali’s ‘The Persistence of Memory’ provides the most obvious link to surrealist approaches that challenged the fixed order of time and space - and to art history.
While earlier versions were presented as digital displays of recorded imagery and sound, the artist has since developed the concept further. VR technology allows participants to physically pass the threshold between the physical and digital realms. Stepping into the experience wearing an Oculus Quest headset creates an environment eerily close to actually dreaming; blocking out external stimuli creates a pleasant sense of isolation while the audio-visual environment provides a link to a wider dreamscape - rather than having your head in the cloud, this represents an active interpretation of the noosphere.
Lili Shen describes her design as ‘soft architecture’ which enables her to illustrate the connection between the collective human subconscious and the physical world. Taking a 180-degree turn within her Noosphere leaves behind the initial presentation and opens an interface that is best described as a membrane between the digital and the physical world. Neither the physical backdrop nor the signals coming through the headset are clearly tangible, the visuals glitchy and audio now melting into background noises. Trying to describe this once you’ve taken off the headset is a bit like waking from a dream and not being sure how much of it actually happened. Imagine being able to share dreams without having to translate them into words upon waking!
Lili Shen understands technology as a neutral witness and redefines dreams as malleable psychological data that can be integrated into the collective conscience with AI acting as translator. She conceives projects to encourage critical thinking and to counteract passive consumption of content. Where will she take us next?