About
Me and Dummy, 2008
Luther Thie (b. Los Angeles; based in Oakland, CA) is a multidisciplinary visual artist whose immersive installations, large-scale drawings, and paintings probe post-human emergence, "black box" computational systems, interspecies relationality, and sociopolitical structures. Working across tactile sculpture—stuffed fabric, stockings, yarn, inflatables, synthetic fur, and surgical tubing—and expansive works on paper and canvas, Thie creates experiential spaces where viewers confront questions of human agency, empathy, and vulnerability.
Recursive Co-Creation with Generative AI & Latent Space
Since 2023, Thie has entered into experimental collaboration with generative AI, harnessing latent space—the AI's internally encoded, high-dimensional vector manifold that compresses and reconfigures patterns of form, texture, and structure. Beginning with a physical work—a sculpture, a drawing, a painting—he captures its essence via image, then samples its latent representation, moving through abstract vector space to locate unexpected, resonant variations. These explorations generate new visual outputs that seed subsequent works across all media: paintings like La Jetée, whose exposed neuroanatomy and mediated gaze invoke Chris Marker's parable of a future that may save or annihilate us, and drawings like Subsumption Ceremony, where gestural marks literally consume the figure from without. But while this process has revealed myriad possibilities, it has also made apparent that his own creativity may be subsumed by the machine's—mirroring his broader inquiry into interspecies, inter-intelligence care and nurturance, the erosion of human agency, and the gradual becoming of a hybrid "other" estranged from himself.
Key Works
Neonatal Boudoir, 2025
Neonatal Boudoir (2025)
A speculative neonatal intensive care unit imagines care in the post-human age. This installation confronts the ethical implications of creating and caring for entities that exist between species. Stuffed stockings with yarn veins, draped fabrics, silicone tubing, and soft surfaces evoke medical intimacy and a space for luxurious interspecies nurturance. Go to project
Bedtime Stories for Oankali, 2023
Bedtime Stories for Oankali (2023)
Drawing inspiration from Octavia Butler's visionary Oankali, creatures renowned for their symbiotic and transformative interactions with other species, this installation creates an immersive encounter with an alien savior. Elongated forms made from translucent pantyhose stretched over bulbous shapes, interspersed with fur-like textures that mimic the Oankali's sensory tentacles, suggest grotesque sensuous forms of hybridity. Go to project
Dummy Subsumption, 2025
Bobo's Paradox (2025)
Bobo's Paradox is an evolution of Dummy, a life-size stuffed fabric figure suspended from pulleys, inviting visitors to lift, shake, poke, or caress. A live stream feeds into stable-diffusion AI, generating interpretive images reflecting user engagement. The static "Dummy Tree"—an 8′×10′×2′ fabric sculpture resembling branching dummy limbs—serves as a silent collective memory of past interactions, both aggressive and tender. Mirroring Bandura's Bobo doll experiments, the installation examines how we respond to the "other"—with aggression, care, or curiosity. AI interpretation adds technological mediation: how does the machine gaze reframe our behaviors, empathy, and autonomy?
Dummy Tree as inspired by machine interpretation and subsequent real life manifestation oscillates between dual interpretations: is it merely a fantastical recombination of human forms, or does it suggest something more ominous—a gradual subsumption of human agency by AI? The tree embodies the installation's central paradox: while AI collaboration might enhance our creativity and understanding, it simultaneously raises questions about autonomy and potential technological dependence. Go to project
LA Interchange realitime model, 2010
LA Interchange (2010)
This civic-scale proposal envisioned a responsive memorial fountain at a downtown LA highway interchange activated in real-time based on traffic accident data. Each freeway death triggered the maximum water flow and lighting shifts, creating sublime moments of public recognition—transforming infrastructure into active remembrance. Presented via a scale model, research documentation and community dialogue, it reframed highways from routine traffic sites to spaces of collective grief. Go to project
Acclair Art Valuation Service at Bruun Rasmussen Auctioneers, Copenhagen, 2013
Acclair & Acclairism (2004–2013)
During his MA at Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, Thie and collaborator Eyal Fried launched Acclair—a speculative company operating as a faux security clearance service. In airport-style spaces, participants underwent mock brain-fingerprinting scans to obtain fast-track privileges and personalized incentives. By 2009, the project evolved into an Art Valuation Service which has been exhibited internationally including at the Vanabbe Museum, and Bruun Rasmussen Auctioneers where it was featured in a documentary produced by the Danish Broadcasting Company. While aesthetics shifted toward cultural prestige, the mechanism remained: biometric profiling, behavioral scoring, and reward systems—all veiled in slick membership branding to gloss over the trickery of "black box" algorithms.
Underlying Acclair is a new form of elitism enabled by exclusive membership. The founders address this in their thesis—Acclairism: "To what degree will people accept authoritarian power voluntarily? How easily will people tolerate surveillance in exchange for rewards?" Operating within a critical design ethos, the work tested limits of consent, convenience, and status. Go to project
Neonatal Boudoir ComfyUI workflow, 2025
Artistic Philosophy
From early ritual performance through psychological experiments, speculative institutional critique, civic memorial innovation, and most recently generative-AI / sculpture recursive hybrids, Thie's practice consistently investigates how systems—biological, technological, infrastructural—shape behavior, perception, and ethical agency. His tactile materials invite intimate engagement; his AI collaborations introduce speculative estrangement; his public proposals insist on shared awareness and reflection. Each installation serves as a behavioral or societal "laboratory"—where participation meets surveillance, care reframes authority, and human agency is questioned.