CYNTHIA X. HUA is a researcher + artist + journalist interested in the Internet as a work of the collective consciousness. She specializes in artificial intelligence, algorithms and other ways data and images interact online. Her works utilize inputs from large crowds that are clustered, collaged and computed together using technology. These projects examine the ways we construct digital communities, often as ghostly shadows that echo the physical and geographic circumstances of our actual communities. Hua has shown or is forthcoming at the LA Center for Digital Arts, the San Francisco Arts Institute, The Midway and other institutions. She is currently an incubator member at The Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, studying tools for photo reconstruction and other intersections of journalism and digital documentation. She has previously been awarded fellowships/residencies from the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts as well as Signal Culture , The Laboratory and the Nieman Foundation at Harvard. She has spoken about technology and culture at outlets such as Theorizing the Web and Creative Tech Week.
Her professional background includes positions shaping mass media systems through research and strategy at companies including Showtime, Hulu, BuzzFeed Motion Pictures and Facebook Video, with a focus on understanding how feed algorithms shape cultural production ecosystems. She helped launch initiatives such as BuzzFeed Tasty and Facebook Watch. Cynthia originally studied media theory at Yale, writing her thesis on storytelling on the Internet.
Reach her at cynthiaxhua@gmail.com