A free public exhibition at the Duderstadt Gallery
2281 Bonisteel Boulevard, Ann Arbor, MI 48109

ARTIST

Katherine Behar, Michigan ESC Artist-in-Residence; Associate Professor of Art at Baruch College

DESCRIPTION

Anonymous Autonomous is a robotic art installation being developed by Katherine Behar, Artist in Residence at the University of Michigan, together with a team of U-M students. As the Fall 2019 semester draws to a close, we invite the U-M community to meet the team and see the work in progress with live demos of the robots and experimentation in the Duderstadt Center Gallery.

Anonymous Autonomous is an interactive art installation that transforms empty office chairs into driverless cars. The Anonymous Autonomous Work in Progress Community Demo offers viewers a peek under the hood of two development processes—of autonomous control systems and of art installations—both of which are typically hidden in polished black boxes.

In particular, autonomous vehicles are part of a wave of transformative technologies that utilize automation, deskilling, and algorithmic decision-making. These processes are hidden in polished black boxes, where they remain out of sight and out of control for drivers and pedestrians. This hidden development process of algorithmic interactivity is similar to the hidden development process of an art installation, which is typically closed to audiences until the artwork is complete. This community demo opens up a work in progress to the public, and encourages viewers to participate in understanding and shaping algorithmic autonomous control systems.

The artist and student team members will be available to discuss their work on the robots, and demonstrate how they operate. Audience members can reroute the chairs by laying strips of paper that serve as lane markings on the floor, and also debug and tune the algorithms the chair is using to avoid these markings. We invite viewers to step behind the curtain, look under the hood, and engage in an active conversation about questions of automation, deskilling, and algorithmic decision-making.

ARTIST BIO

Katherine Behar is an artist and critical theorist of new media whose work explores gender and labor in digital culture. In contexts spanning automated labor, mandated obsolescence, big data, and machine learning, Behar applies object-oriented feminism into practice in her art and writing. Her work connects feminist and antiracist post-colonial histories with a wave of new theories that grapple with the nonhuman object world. Katherine Behar’s works have appeared throughout North America and Europe. Pera Museum in Istanbul presented a comprehensive survey exhibition and catalog, Katherine Behar: Data’s Entry | Veri Girişi, in 2016. Additional solo exhibitions include Katherine Behar: Anonymous Autonomous (2018), Katherine Behar: E-Waste (2014, catalog/traveling), and numerous others collaborating as “Disorientalism.” Behar is the editor of Object-Oriented Feminism, coeditor of And Another Thing: Nonanthropocentrism and Art, and author of Bigger than You: Big Data and Obesity. She is Associate Professor of New Media Arts at Baruch College, CUNY.

PHOTO CREDIT

Caption; An art installation that resembles a road, with two desk chairs on wheels. Courtesy of Katherine Behar, Anonymous Autonomous, 2018–ongoing. Photo credit: Sean Carroll.

CO-SPONSORS

This event is co-sponsored by the Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG) with support from the Stamps School of Art and Design and the MCubed Program.

Work in progress will continue in the gallery Dec 13–20, 2019