The Department of Species Services (DSS)
April 17 – May 9, 2026
Shihan Zhang with Mingyong Cheng, Han Zhang, Ziwei Liu, and Jiaye Leng
Opening: Friday, April 17, 2026 as part of ./local_memory: soft systems
Closing: Saturday, May 9, 2026 | 12 – 5 PM
The Gray Area Gallery is open:
May 1 | 12 – 5 PM
May 8 | 12 – 6 PM
and by appointment, email wade at grayarea.org
The Department of Species Services, or DSS for short, is an interactive exhibit that materializes an imagined unemployment office in a speculative future. In this alternative scenario, set in the year 2035, DSS has been established as the first artificial intelligence-led non-governmental organization in the United States. The Department’s mission is to monitor ecosystems, design interspecies support infrastructure, and pioneer new forms of post-anthropocentric labor. Embracing a planetary systems perspective, the DSS considers all living things, human and non-human alike, as interconnected participants in a shared biosphere. Through the DSS, humans in this future world may apply for newly defined ecological roles. Instead of serving corporate or even government entities, workers labor in service of other species and biomes: from bees, to rivers and forests, to invisible, microbial communities.
One such speculative job scenario comes to life in the Gray Area Gallery: the Human Pollinator.
In the artists’ fictional narrative, a sudden and unexplained decline in bee populations across California creates a devastating disruption in the reproductive cycles of the California poppy flower. The California poppy, or Eschscholzia californica, is a keystone species that supports a wide diversity of wildlife on the West Coast in addition to maintaining soil stability. In response to this crisis, the California division of the Department of Species Services initiates an emergency recruitment campaign to hire new human pollinators to restore the ecological balance.
As new recruits, viewers are equipped with a specially-designed and 3D-printed Pollination Glove, which augments human touch to achieve maximum cross-pollination efficiency. Visitors are invited to don the glove and step into the role of human pollinator: haptic feedback within the glove responds to motion, simultaneously triggering spatialized sound within a constructed sculptural environment. A dual-channel projection spans two walls, juxtaposing the rendered perspective of the bumblebee with a live camera feed embedded within the Pollination Glove.
Within this environment, the performative gesture of pollination becomes an embodied mode of ecological thinking that fosters empathy between human, machine, animal, and plant.
This exhibition is presented at a moment of unprecedented growth, widespread adoption, and unchecked use of artificial intelligence. AI tools are now implemented in consumer-facing products across industries, and have become daily processes for computer users globally. More alarmingly, agentic systems, intelligent software protocols that delegate decision-making to machine actors, are beginning to be deployed at enterprise scale. Compounding the generalized environmental anxiety that AI has produced, this exhibit is set against a backdrop of widespread tech layoffs and white collar job instability.
From these murky waters, The Department of Species Services floats a new way to consider the role of AI in our lives and ecosystems. In this speculative framework, machine and human labor take on new urgency and have been reoriented towards sustainable ecological futures. Instead, AI has been refigured as a planetary technology for care and reciprocity, a force that molds our world in favor of coexistence over extinction.
Shihan Zhang is an award-winning design futurist who builds worlds to think with. Her work explores more-than-human futures through systemic worldbuilding and immersive simulations, translating ecological, technological, and cultural shifts into tangible, multi-sensory encounters. Often grounded in the familiar yet subtly uncanny, her projects make complex planetary challenges and emerging challenges felt, questioned, and open to renegotiation. Her work has been recognized by the Fast Company Innovation by Design Awards and World Changing Ideas Awards, Core77 Awards, ACM CHI, Falling Walls Science Summit, Lumen Prize, and the International Design Excellence Awards, and was named among the 100 Designs of the Year by Award360 (Asia). Her work has been exhibited globally at the Museum of Design Atlanta, Hyundai Motorstudio, Toronto Design Week, and Figma Conference. Zhang’s cross-disciplinary practice includes collaborations with NEW INC, SPACE10 at IKEA, and the Institute for the Future. She is a Certified Foresight Professional with the Global Foresight Advisory Council.
Mingyong Cheng is an interdisciplinary artist and creative technologist working with generative AI, computational media, and interactive systems. Her practice spans immersive installations, multimedia performance, and real-time audiovisual environments that explore how artistic experience emerges through the interaction of human bodies, machines, and environmental signals. She approaches AI not simply as a tool but as a creative collaborator that reshapes perception, cultural memory, and ecological imagination. Cheng is currently completing a PhD in Visual Arts at the University of California San Diego, following an MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts from Duke University. Her work has been presented internationally at venues including ACM SIGGRAPH, ISEA, NeurIPS, CVPR, and ACM Creativity and Cognition, and in exhibitions and commissions at institutions such as the San Diego Museum of Art and Jacob’s Pillow’s Doris Duke Theater.
Han Zhang is a multimedia artist, computer musician, performer and engineer based on the earth. She actively works on creative projects that explore the new form of multimedia participatory performances with DIY installations that deliver immersive interactive experience and support her theatrical practice. She employs a wide array of tools and methods, particularly focusing on the use of embodied and environmental sensors, and the electromagnetic field. The ubiquitously existing entities allow her to design interfaces and modes of interaction that place the concept and aesthetics at their core. By integrating them into her artworks, she aims to foster discussions on the collective comprehension of technology, art, and substantive human lives. In the realm of music technology and engineering, she is interested in exploring the interpretability and controllability of timbre in sound and designing apparatus that incorporate innovative research results. Han has presented her artworks in various academic conferences including ICMC, ArteFacto, Siggraph, etc, as well as in AI-centered conferences such as NeurIPS and CVPR. She has performed in venues including Qualcomm Institute(CA, US), Future Stage(NY, US), Project [BLANK](CA, US), CMMAS(Mexico), etc. She is a composer in residency at elektronmusikstudion(EMS) in Stockholm, Sweden, 2025, and has finished residencies at Oracle Egg(LA, US) and Rocky Mountain College Art + Design(US). Her latest experimental music film is released by Music For You Inbox with her duo āññā. Han is currently pursuing her PhD in Computer Music at UC San Diego, and she has received her Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Northwestern University, and her Bachelor of Engineering in Automation from Tsinghua University, China. She also visited Center for New Music and Audio Technologies(CNMAT) at UC Berkeley as a research scholar.
Ziwei is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and engineer whose practice is shaped by diverse cultural influences and the evolving digital era. Having lived and worked across different parts of the world, he brings a cross-cultural perspective to work situated at the intersection of design, technology, and human behavior. His projects explore how systems, both technical and social, can be reimagined to foster sustainability, inclusivity, and new forms of interaction. Ziwei holds an MFA in Design from California College of the Arts. His work has been recognized by the A’ Design Award, MUSE Design Awards, and the London Design Awards, has been exhibited at W Gallery, and has been featured in publications including the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Hi, I’m Jiaye, a Ph.D. candidate at City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK). My practice lies at the intersection of Human-AI Interaction, creativity support, and immersive technologies such as VR and AR. My research has been published in top venues including ACM CHI, DIS, and IEEE TVCG.
