Curatorial A(i)gents

Curatorial A(i)gents presents a series of machine-learning experiments with Harvard Art Museums' collections and data developed by members and affiliates of metaLAB (at) Harvard.

Long before computers came to pervade every aspect of modern life, museums were collecting, organizing, and storing data. The art museum is a kind of vast machine for making all types of objects interoperable, from Bronze Age figurines to contemporary works of performance art. Like our digital machines, museums engender experiences of wonder and discovery—and they’re also engines of bias, power, and invisibility.

During Spring 2022, metaLAB (at) Harvard will take up residency in the Harvard Art Museums’ Lightbox Gallery to explore contact zones across computers, collections, and culture. In the first phase of the program, called Curatorial A(i)gents, metaLAB’s international consortium of artists, data scientists, and scholars will delve deeply into the holdings of the Harvard Art Museums and other collections. These projects use algorithmic methods to uncover patterns and relationships in the collections, making them sensible and navigable in ways that extend beyond the relations of works on walls. The projects will incorporate a range of critical making and media-driven inquiry. Appearing as a weekly cycle of interactive installations, projects will be organized not by collection, but by some of the underlying topics that organize museums, databases, and worlds beyond institutional walls.

Schedule

March 1–6: Kim Albrecht, Watching Machines Loving Grace
March 8–13: Minne Atairu, Igùn
March 15–20: Jeff Steward and Lauren Hanson, Processing the Page: Computer Vision and Otto Piene’s Sketchbooks
March 22–27: Philipp Schmitt, Sympoietic System
March 29–April 3: Francisco Alarcon and Stefan Helmreich, Ocean Amplification
April 5–10: metaLAB, Object Map
April 12–17: Giulia Taurino and Jonatan Reyes, This Recommendation System Is Broken
April 19–24: Kevin Brewster, Dan Newman, and Keith Hartwig, AIxquisite Corpse
April 26–May 1: Lins Derry, Second Look
May 3–8: Jeffrey Schnapp, Dietmar Offenhuber, Todd Linkner, and Kevin Brewster, A Flitting Atlas of the Human Gaze
May 10–15: Dario Rodighiero, Doug Duhaime, Christopher Pietsch, Jeffrey Schnapp, Lins Derry, Jordan Kruguer, and Maximilian Mueller, Surprise Machines