BCNM Around the Web Spring 24
Check out our faculty and alumni around the web this Spring, 2024!
Ken Goldberg
Ken Goldberg supervises research in Robotics and Automation. He and his co-authors have published over 300 peer-reviewed technical papers on algorithms for robotics, automation, and social information filtering, and he holds ten U.S. patents.
—Join the Global Engagement Seminar: Me and My Robot on Wednesday, February 7, between 8:00 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. for a talk and Q&A presentation by Ken Goldberg on Unfamiliar Intelligence: Art, Exoticism, Robots, and AI. Find more info here!
—Ken also took part in an event hosted by the University of Chicago, which focused on The New Wave in Robot Grasping. A “New Wave” of research considers
hybrid methods that combine analytic models with stochastic sampling and Deep Learning models. I’ll present this history with new results from our lab on grasping diverse and previously unknown objects. Learn More here!
Alex Saum-Pascual
—Alex Saum-Pascual is a digital artist, poet, and associate professor of Contemporary Spanish Literature and New Media. She took part in Mercedes Bunz and Joan Fontcuberta.
A cultural revolution as a moderator for the event. Mercedes Bunz, a researcher in the field of digital culture, and the photographer Joan Fontcuberta spoke with Alex Saum about artificial intelligence and artistic creation. Learn more here!
Coye Cheshire
—Coye Cheshire is a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information. He studies sociological social psychology and group processes, with a focus on social exchange, cooperation, and trust in technology-mediated environments. Coye was featured in the article "Here's the truth about those white streaks that criss-cross the sky," published by BoingBoing. Read it here!
Trevor Paglen
Trevor Paglen is an artist whose work spans image-making, sculpture, investigative journalism, writing, engineering, and numerous other disciplines. This spring, Trevor took part in multiple showcases and exhibitions, including:
—Poetics of Encryption Spring program 2024 February 17–May 26, 2024. KW Institute for Contemporary Art is pleased to present its Spring Program 2024 with the extensive group exhibition Poetics of Encryption. As part of the KW Digital Program, the exhibition spans analogue and digital media, featuring historic and newly commissioned works over all floors at KW by more than 40 international artists.
—Uncomputables: On Alien Intelligences and Cybernetics, presented by e-flux.An online film program put together by Agnieszka Kurant as the thirteenth edition of Artist Cinemas, a long-term series curated by artists for e-flux Film. Learn More Here!
—"AI Photography: Trevor Paglen" was an event hosted by the Colombia University of the Arts as part of the class VIAR 1603/5603 Artificial Intelligence & Photography. Artist Trevor Paglen discussed machine vision. Learn More Here!
—Three images of Hollywood film star Marilyn Monroe have been lent to the Victoria and Albert (V&A) museum by Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish. The photographs are being “presented together to the public for the first time,” the V&A said, and is the museum’s “largest temporary exhibition of photography to date." More than 300 rare prints from 140 photographers were selected from Sir Elton and Furnish’s collection of over 7,000 images for the gallery in South Kensington, London. The collection covers from 1950 to the present day and follows on from 2016’s the Radical Eye: Modernist Photography from the Sir Elton John Collection, which showed images ranging from the 1920s to the 1950s at Tate Modern. There are also works at the V&A by Americans Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, William Eggleston, Diane Arbus and Carrie Mae Weems, and Chinese contemporary artist Ai Weiwei, along with Sir Elton’s new acquisitions by Tyler Mitchell, Trevor Paglen and An-My Le. Learn More Here!
Jen Schradie
Jen Schradie is an Assistant Professor at the Observatoire sociologique du changement (OSC) at Sciences Po in Paris. She received her PhD from the Department of Sociology at the University of California-Berkeley with a designated emphasis in New Media from the Berkeley Center for New Media.
—Jen took part in the Sciences Po Centre de recherche sur les inégalités sociales as part of the Le Séminaire scientifique, learn more here!
—She was part of the The Startup Nation Paradox presented by the Sciences Po Centre de recherche sur les inégalités sociales, learn more here!
Edgar Fabián Frías
Edgar Fabián Frías is a multidisciplinary artist, psychotherapist, educator, curator, and brujx based in Los Angeles. With a passion for breaking boundaries and creating new forms of knowledge, Frías blends diverse artistic disciplines to produce thought-provoking and immersive works of art that transcend conventional categories.
—They were featured in HyperAllergic's article for the "10 Shows to See in Los Angeles This February". Three group shows — ART IRAN, Scratching at the Moon, and I Will Meet You Again — focus on artistic strategies to connect with the community and home. Edgar Fabián Frías: The Museum Of Multidimensional Mutant Maps draws inspiration from the Wixárika (Huichol) people’s Nierika technique, a traditional craft that incorporates yarn, beads, and other objects to depict symbolic images of flora and fauna. Frías creates paintings, sculptures, videos, and interactive installations that subvert linear portrayals of time and space. Learn More Here!
—Their artworks Makuyeika (de aquí y de allá) and Selfie Inversion were exhibited at The Oculus at the World Trade Center in New York City as a part of the exhibition Junk Drawer curated by Emil Bean and Superchief Gallery. Check it out here!
danah boyd
danah boyd is a Partner Researcher at Microsoft Research and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Georgetown University. I am also the founder of Data & Society. She is an academic and a scholar whose research examines the intersection between technology and society.
—danah took part in Tech & Society Week from April 8–12, 2024, for the third annual Tech & Society Week—a week of events across campus exploring various issues at the nexus of technology and society. Whether you’re deeply immersed in these issues or just curious, there are events for you. Learn More Here!