A Well-trained Eye

September 22 - March 02,2024

From the UT Visual Arts Center: "A Well-trained Eye features 13 contemporary artists who explore the possibilities, limitations, and responsibilities that come with instructing both humans and computers how to see. The exhibition considers the potential to classify and surveil that we have coded into our AI technologies, looking closely at the biases that underlie data collection and analysis. Encompassing different media—drawing, photography, video, and installation—the artworks on view examine the reciprocal relationship between human and computer vision; they interrogate how technical systems increasingly mediate our relationship with ourselves, the environment, and to one another, fundamentally shaping the way we see. Rather than simply denouncing or blindly celebrating these technological developments, the artists in the exhibition compel us to challenge the possibilities of what these tools are capable of, and what a deeper creative collaboration with AI might look like.   By establishing a parallel between training algorithms and the human process of learning to see, A Well-trained Eye reflects on how the developers of artificial intelligence have ingrained their worldviews in their creations, including certain principles, associations and aesthetic preferences. At a pressing time when machine learning tools are reconfiguring not just the economy, but also how we value academic learning, labor, privacy, and the quality of our interpersonal relationships, this exhibition thinks critically about the categories and value systems driving these new technologies, inviting us to unlearn some of our own ways of seeing.   With American Artist, Zach Blas, Jim Campbell, Ronnie Clarke, Danielle Dean, Esther Hovers, Alicia Kopf, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Trevor Paglen, Macarena Ruiz Tagle, Jason Salavon, Jemima Wyman, and Canek Zapata.   A Well-trained Eye is organized by Maria Emilia Fernandez, former assistant curator. Lead support for the exhibition provided by the Jedel Family Foundation and the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Foundation. Additional support provided by Suzanne Deal Booth and Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities."

On View: September 22, 2023 | 12-5 pm

UT Visual Arts Center (VAC) 23rd and Trinity Streets
Austin, TX 78712
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