Ranger Liu (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist-astronomer whose work across both fields repurposes scientific structures to communicate “alien” subjectivities. They explore many different forms of alienness: their own alien(ated) experience as a queer and trans Chinese-American; the nonhuman and posthuman alienness of particles, trees, and machines; and the reflective alienness of speculative extraterrestrial life. These explorations manifest across multiple mediums, spanning various combinations of sound, video, installation, sculpture, performance, writing, and more.
Conceptually, they reimagine scientific theories, abstractions, frameworks, and methods as containers for translating these various alienhoods. By cross-applying the truth-making methodologies of science and art, they leverage the cultural legitimacy of science and “rationality” to impart a concreteness to alien subjectivities that are frequently dismissed as “imaginary."
Ranger was born in Manhattan and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. They hold an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons School of Design and BA degrees in Astrophysics and Computer Science from Columbia University. They currently live and work in Seattle, Washington, where they moonlight as an Astronomy PhD student searching for signs of artistic extraterrestrial megastructures.
Ranger has performed, exhibited, and published nationally, including at CURRENTS New Media Festival, New Interfaces for Musical Expression, Bridges Math Art, and multiple galleries across Seattle and New York. They have been awarded residencies from I-Park Foundation, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and Peter Bullough Foundation. This fall, they will be a New Media artist-in-residence at Alfred University’s Institute for Electronic Arts.
In their free time, you might find them speedsolving Rubik's cubes, playing piano, (begrudgingly) partaking in various forms of exercise, or diligently sawing away at a woodworking project.