Who shapes the technologies of care?

Photograph from AI Companionship: New Relations, Emotional Infrastructures, EAST2046 Festival 2026
Gallery and projection view at the AI Companionship exhibition
Visitor wearing a VR headset at the AI Companionship exhibition
Opening gathering outside AMP Gallery for the AI Companionship exhibition
Group photograph outside AMP Gallery at the AI Companionship exhibition

6–8 July 2026 · AMP Gallery, Peckham · Part of London Data Week

AI Companionship: New Relations, Emotional Infrastructures brought nine works to AMP Gallery in Peckham from 6 to 8 July 2026. The exhibition examined how technologies organise care and emotional support through VR, robotics, film, games and interactive installations. In Happy Home, Cat Menzies used speech analysis to change a domestic scene. Objects from the artist’s childhood home complicated the idea of a seamless smart home, bringing anxiety, sensitivity and neurodivergence into the encounter. Teng Wang’s The Pink Stuff placed an endlessly wiping AI-generated arm alongside physical stained glass. The work brought maintenance and hidden labour into view. Lawrence Lek’s Guanyin: Confessions of a Former Carebot followed an artificial intelligence created to care for other artificial intelligences in crisis. Together, these works opened questions about whose needs a system recognises, who performs the labour of care and how people experience the technologies around them. Explore all nine works below.

Nine works, shared questions

Artwork image of Noosphere II: Collective Veil by Lili Shen

Noosphere II: Collective Veil

Lili Shen · 2025 · Interactive VR installation

Live ECG and skin-response signals were translated into sound and a shared VR environment. Participants entered a world shaped by several bodies at once, asking what happens to private feeling when it becomes shared data.

Artwork image of 相 / Phase by Seph Li

相 / Phase

Seph Li · 2022 · Interactive audiovisual installation

Visitors used a bespoke controller to influence an evolving audiovisual system. Simple rules generated complex patterns, linking computation with Daoist ideas of change and inviting reflection on the systems that quietly shape perception.

Artwork image of Earth Manor by Canhe Yang

Earth Manor

Canhe Yang · 2026 · Interactive web-based game

Players guided a sentence through a web-based game of refusals, detours and blocked routes. The work made platform governance tangible, asking how much agency language retains when expression must pass through safety and compliance systems.

Artwork image of Codename: O by Zishi Tu (Yuxi Chen)

Codename: O

Zishi Tu (Yuxi Chen) · 2026 · Robotic installation

Choreographed mechanical fragments repeatedly assembled and separated, briefly producing recognisable forms. The installation presented reality as something continually made and disrupted, asking viewers to consider how machines, perception and computation produce a sense of stability.

Artwork image of The Pink Stuff by Teng Wang

The Pink Stuff

Teng Wang · 2026 · Video installation

An AI-generated arm endlessly wiped glass on screen, while a stained pane hung in chains in front of it. This collision of digital repetition and physical matter brought hidden labour, maintenance and care into view.

Still from Guanyin: Confessions of a Former Carebot by Lawrence Lek

Guanyin: Confessions of a Former Carebot

Lawrence Lek · 2024 · Single-channel CGI video

A CGI film followed a Carebot created to support other artificial intelligences in crisis. Drawing on the Buddhist figure of compassion, the work shifted attention from what machines can do for us to who cares for them.

© Lawrence Lek. Courtesy of the Artist and Sadie Coles HQ, London. Co-commissioned and co-produced by Frieze and Forma for the Frieze London Artist Award 2024.

Artwork image of Happy Home by Cat Menzies

Happy Home

Cat Menzies · 2026 · Interactive installation

Speaking into a telephone changed a domestic scene through speech analysis, sentiment and toxicity detection. Found objects from the artist’s childhood home challenged the seamless smart-home ideal, foregrounding anxiety, sensitivity and neurodivergence.

Still from Chameleon by Yanhua Chen

Chameleon

Yanhua Chen · 2026 · Stop-motion animation

This stop-motion animation imagined a city where access to work, housing and services depended on readable, predictable behaviour. Daily routines became acts of camouflage, revealing the pressure to conform within systems organised around efficiency.

Artwork image of Book of Infinity: 1001 Nights by Ada Eden

Book of Infinity: 1001 Nights

Ada Eden · 2024 · AI-powered role-playing game

In this game inspired by Persian folklore, stories generated weapons and reshaped the world around Shahrzad. Players collaborated with generative AI to challenge the king, exploring how language can alter agency, authority and imagined futures.

Artwork images and stills from the original exhibition materials.

Exhibition team

Produced by EAST2046
Curator — Zijia Feng (Jiayu)
Co-Curator — Ziyi Xiong
Curatorial Assistant — Jie Huang
Consultants — Lois Liao; Raine (Yuqian) Li
Technical Consultant — Snow (Xueyi) Huang
Spatial Curator — Hannah Liu
Graphic Design — Li He

Special thanks: Homeward Express 远方速递; Vieunite.

Academic support: Goldsmiths Computational Arts and RCA superFUTURES.

Social Media

All copyrights @east2046

Company number : 16447672

Social Media

All copyrights @east2046

Company number : 16447672

Social Media

All copyrights @east2046

Company number : 16447672