Situated media
for a flourishing world.

Selected Works

A sea-green DUST device showing the day's climate news on its e-ink screen, standing before a stack of translucent, grey, black and yellow case shells DUST shown at Rising Talents, Isola Design Festival, Milan Design Week 2026 The DUST research paper published in Proceedings of the Design Society, Cambridge University Press
Feb 2026 · AI IoT

DUST

An #AIforHumanity pocket news device. Advanced summarisation techniques remove trigger words and biases, ending sensational news.

Milan Design Week 2026 · Isola Design · Dezeen · Design Intelligence Awards nomination
A study grid of translucent biomaterial specimens cast from food waste, flecked with coffee, herbs and eggshell Textile as Ecological Index paper, DRS Textile Intersections 2026, Imperial College London
Feb 2026 · User–material interaction

MILES

Material journey. Biomaterials cast from a household’s own food waste and displayed as a conversation piece.

DRS Textile Intersections 2026 · Exhibited at Hangar Gallery and Great Exhibition Road Spring Show · RCA Natural Matters Lab · Across RCA
Confectionery pieces set along a frosted acrylic plinth at the stand A sheet of amber sugar glass cast in a bubble pattern, with a handwritten card reading Break to taste Visitors leaning in to break and taste the sugar glass Valerie in conversation with a visitor at the W*NK WONK table
Aug 2026 · Food Science Engineering

W*NK WONK

Edible memories. Local flavours cast as modular architecture, built for play, conversation and better eating.

Design Confectionery for Singapore National Day 2026, Kensington, London
Point-cloud rendering of the Gower Peninsula, the hyper-localised interactive installation in Swansea, Wales Valerie demonstrating the installation to a visitor wearing an EEG headband at MobileHCI 2026 The demo setup: a particle rendering projected on a wooden wall beside the paper, with sensor hardware on the table Holding the MobileHCI 2026 Best Demo Award certificates
Sep 2026 · Biosignal installation

Affective Installations

Interactive art as a medium for bringing our attention and meditative levels to our awareness.

ACM SIGCHI MobileHCI 2026, Swansea, Wales · Best Demo Award

Publications

Material Attunement in Minimal Media: Designing Tactility for Information Engagement Full paper · Sole author · Proceedings of the Design Society: DESIGN Conference 2026 · Cambridge University Press · Dubrovnik, Croatia Published May 2026 · DOI 10.1017/pds.2026.10621
Designing Context-Aware Generative Installations: A Modular Framework for Adaptive Public Space Demo paper · First author · MobileHCI 2026 · Wales, UK Best Demo Award, 30% of votes across twelve demos Accepted, presented Aug 2026 · DOI 10.1145/3821581.3833135
Textile as Ecological Index: Casting Domestic Food Waste into Wearable Biomaterial Media through a Domestic Biodesign Framework Full paper · DRS Textile Intersections 2026 · Design Research Society Digital Library · London, UK Accepted, forthcoming presentation at Imperial College Dyson School, Sept 2026
Signal Garden: A Longitudinal EEG Installation on Affective Conference Presence First author · ACM MM 2026 · Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Accepted, forthcoming presentation Nov 2026
More-Than-Human-Centred Design & Design for Meaningfulness Expert panel · Led at IASDR 2025: Design Next · Taipei, Taiwan · With Cees de Bont (NUS), Tsai Lu Liu (Virginia Tech), Sheng-Hung Lee (MIT); critique from Don Norman Dec 2025

Art Practice

A long pale pink cast acrylic block suspended on fine wires in a white gallery Resonance exhibition poster, London Design Festival 2026, 67 York Street Gallery
18–21 Sep 2026 · Selected for exhibition

Great World

Cast acrylic.

Resonance · 67 York Street Gallery, Marylebone, London × FAYA Contemporary · London Design Festival 2026 official partner
A small timber dome model resting on a stack of red bricks, a study for the kiln
Jul & 11–12 Sep 2026 · Sponsored Residency & Exhibition

Reading Design

Crafting human–environment delight. A kiln built with local brick manufacturer H.G. Matthews.

Summer Residency in Buckinghamshire · Group exhibition at Park Royal District · London Design Festival 2026 · Grymsdyke Farm Publication
An essay projected on the gallery wall beside Henry Moore's Mother and Child at Tate Britain Two frames from the evening: in conversation before the projected essay, and standing beside the Moore drawing
Aug 2026 · Museum Feature

Tate Britain

Essay on living between cultures, projected in the Henry Moore room. Selected from 400 responses across 60 nationalities.

Tate Lates · Dear Diaspora · Zineb Sedira Extended Programming

Research & Affiliations

Design for Flourishing Wellbeing Technologies Lab, Imperial College London, under Chair of Design Engineering Professor Rafael A. Calvo. Positive computing technologies for wellbeing, affect and decision-making. 2026 —
Imperial College London × National University of Singapore Visiting Researcher at the College of Design and Engineering. Supporting Professor Calvo in facilitating the cross-university collaboration; research meetings and three workshops run on site. 2026 —
IDE Course, RCA AI Lab Design-engineering for new Physical AI interfaces, in collaboration with the OpenAI San Francisco design team. 2025

About

Portrait of Valerie Chua, smiling, in a white organza garment with a floral print

Valerie Chua Yan Tong is an artist and research scholar in media design and engineering. Originally from Singapore, she is currently based at Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art, working from research through making to exhibition and commerce.

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