James Bloom presents Half Cheetah

James Bloom presents Half Cheetah, a new moving-image work that explores the strange intersection of artificial intelligence, human behaviour, and perpetual motion. A London-based artist whose practice examines the systems that shape our digital lives, Bloom creates evolving artworks that never fully resolve, using AI, live data, and algorithmic processes to question ideas of progress, efficiency, and utility.

His work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including ZKM, MOMI, Abu Dhabi Art, and the Venice Biennale 2026, with pieces held in the permanent collections of ZKM and the Francisco Carolinum Museum. Through a practice that combines technical innovation with conceptual rigour, Bloom has established himself as one of the leading voices exploring contemporary AI through art.

Half Cheetah is driven by advanced Reinforcement Learning AI models running continuously in real time. Human figures, created from detailed 3D scans, perform movements generated by mammalian AI agents before a second AI model analyses and continually reorders those behaviours according to changing goals. Rather than optimising for success, the work embraces repetition, instability, and failure.

The result is a hypnotic moving-image environment where bodies endlessly search for an unknown destination, creating a system that functions perfectly despite serving no practical purpose. Through this perpetual cycle, Half Cheetah becomes a compelling reflection on intelligence, automation, and the increasingly complex systems that shape contemporary life.