Elisa Ngan

World Assemblages

A steel cabinet holding a milling machine behind glass, with dials, gauges, switches and green-lit screens below it.

2019 – 2020

An experience for hooking up physical stations to the digital world.

ManufacturingIndustrial IoT

A satellite view of a reservoir and its dam beside the Big Sandy River, with a canal leading across dry land.

2023

An interface for modeling water rights given water scarcity in the Colorado River Basin.

Water

A timeline of data pipeline runs across a day, with green, blue and gray bars on separate rows and a line marking 10:00 am.

2016 – 2018

A collaborative system for orchestrating data pipelines.

Data ScienceData Management

A long corridor between glass server racks, lit by points of light that recede to a vanishing point.

2019

A multi-scalar visualization for optimizing the computational performance of neural networks.

Machine LearningPerformance Optimization

Epistemological Structures

A glowing andon light in a glass tube, linked in a diagram to a light kit, a machine station and CNC #2, and to red, green and white LEDs that mean alert, done and in use.

2019 – 2020

A logic model for programming connected tools at scale.

Data ModelsData Governance

Two white bands of fine woven lines twisting around each other on black.

2019 – 2020

A data platform for governing data platforms.

Data EthicsOntology

A white torus woven from fine curving lines on black, shedding particles at one edge.

2022 – 2024

A design research studio for designing research machines.

Data DesignData Ethics

Perceptual Machinations

A grainy machine-generated image of a pale block shaped like a building, its edges dissolving into white.

2022

A machine eye for seeing machined visions.

Artificial Intelligence

Elisa Ngan is a transdisciplinary experience designer, operations researcher, and visual poet. Her installations, publications, projects, products, and pedagogies are traversal vignettes spanning the emergent contingencies between truth, goodness, and beauty in native and naive data cultures.