RANGER LIU (they/them) is an artist and astrophysicist interested in using abstract theoretical structures as a tool for communicating subjective lived experience. Their work uses scientific frameworks, including (but not limited to) math, astronomy, physics, and linguistics, to develop physical processes for sonic, visual, and sculptural composition and performance. They frequently use their lived experience as a queer & trans Chinese-American as "source material" for these compositions, producing autotheoretic works halfway between data sonification/visualization and traditional composition. They also use decisions from external participants as choice-based source material, producing a kind of aleatoric composition which manifests the aggregated free will and subjective experience of multiple people into sound, sculpture, and performance
Ranger's work has been or will be shown at Parsons School of Design, Wonderville NYC, AbSciCon, the Joint Mathematics Meeting Art Exhibition, and CURRENTS New Media Festival. Their work has been published by New Interfaces for Musical Expression, ACM Symposium for Computational Fabrication, and Bridges Math Art. They have been invited to give artist talks at Berklee College of Music, Rhode Island School of Design, and the University of Washington. In 2025, they will be an artist-in-residence at I-Park Foundation
Ranger was born in Manhattan and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. They graduated from Parsons School of Design with an MFA in Design & Technology in 2024, after receiving BA degrees in Computer Science and Astrophysics from Columbia University in 2022. They are currently an Astronomy PhD student at the University of Washington studying technosignatures as part of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.