PhD, Royal College of Art
Researcher in Artificial and Distributed Intelligence, AiDesign Lab, Royal College of Art & Hong Kong Polytechnic University
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Dr Sonia Bernac is a researcher, philosopher of science, and artist whose practice engages with non-human aesthetics and synthetic recognition, articulating how sensing conditions sense-making in multisensory, generative environments. Working across immersive installation, AI systems, and experimental sculpture, her practice is grounded in the development of self-assembling physical AI systems that evolve their own dynamics and material aesthetics through sensors, code, and material experimentation. In parallel, her research, grounded in complexity science, traces the epistemological burdens of old and new materialisms that inhibit grasping of synthetic intelligence at a planetary scale. Her work generates images of thought that make it possible to think through latent spaces, AI hallucinations, the strange agency of semi-autonomous simulacra, and the aesthetics of synthetic environments. Without equating the non-human with the inhumane, she focuses on the emergence of synthetic teratologies — pathological systemic formations shaped by exclusion, compulsion, or sadistic imaginaries. She has exhibited internationally, and her work has been presented in conferences, academic forums, and artistic contexts.