For audiences wanting a glimpse of the future of AI, Lawrence Lek is a useful guide, if not a comforting one. Through films, virtual-reality works and video-game simulations he creates worlds defined by alienation and the growing consciousness of technological objects: Black Cloud (2021), for instance, is a film about a self-driving car that develops depression, and is the first instalment in a trilogy that explores the loneliness of ‘smart cities’. Lek, who was born in Frankfurt and is of Malaysian Chinese descent, has described his work as ‘Sinofuturism’: much of his work explores issues specific to China, such as the strange phenomenon of the country’s ghost cities. Lek has had no fewer than three institutional solo shows this year, at Goldsmiths CCA in London, Fotografiska in Shanghai and the Hammer Museum in LA. Public collections holding his work include the British Council, the Guggenheim Foundation and M+ in Hong Kong.