Liu Xiaodong: Weight of Insomnia

Quantifying the emotional burden of everyday life through the use of surveillance cameras and a robotic painting machine

Since 2015, Chinese painter Liu Xiaodong (born 1963) has been developing a technologically radical project to create landscape paintings using robotic arms and surveillance cameras. Collectively entitled Weight of Insomnia, this series of paintings is an attempt to quantify the emotional burden carried by people moving through the seemingly ceaseless surroundings of the 24-hour city. Taking live feeds, streaming data and imagery from specific locations, Liu’s painting machine processes these real-time images of the ever-changing flow of humanity into a complex network of abstract marks on canvas, resulting in a machine-manufactured painting.

This book is the first to publish the full extent of this project through its iterations in China, Germany, the UK and Australia. The volume also includes an interview with the artist as well as Liu’s diaries written during the project’s gestation, installation shots and working documents.