Licia He
Shiqing (Licia) He is a Chinese generative artist and a human-computer interaction researcher who creates artistic expressions through technological innovations. Licia is best known for her code-based, robot-rendered art.With a focus on capturing and presenting information around her through visual art, Licia’s explorations led her to combine generative art with robots, bridging her digital and physical painting practices through pen plotters.

For Cure3, Licia is contributing a collection of 120 plotter paintings, titled Expansion Explained. The concept of expansion has been an essential element across many of Licia’s generative works, including Running Moon (2022, Art Blocks Curated) and Sparkling Goodbye (2023, Bright Moments). In 2024, Licia introduced her expansion algorithm to a broader audience through Painting With Plotters, a participatory design event hosted by the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Expansion Explained is a continuation and summary of the expansion algorithm presented during Painting With Plotters. Using her original Python-based algorithm, Licia produced a sequence of 120 images that illustrate the construction of the algorithm. Each image in the sequence was translated into a plotter-operating script and physically rendered with brush and fountain pen ink using a high-precision pen plotter (Axidraw V3/A3). The collection of 120 paintings is hosted on a custom- designed and 3D-printed display stand.The collection can be enjoyed individually as paintings, digitally as a stop-motion animation, and collectively as a sculptural assemblage.