Join Candela Gallery, in-person and online, Thursday, April 6th for a panel discussion with featured artists from our current group exhibition, Machine Vision. Artists Michael Borowski, Adam Chin, Rashed Haq, and Noelle Mason will cover topics relating to the benefits and challenges of technology’s role within our daily lives and creative conversations: AI, robotics, surveillance, data aggregation, equity, and aesthetics.
Doors open at 6:00pm. Discussion and broadcast will begin at 6:30pm.
PLEASE RESERVE YOUR SEAT FOR THE IN-PERSON EVENT HERE.
ABOUT OUR PANEL ARTISTS:
MICHAEL BOROWSKI
Michael Borowski (he/him) is an artist living and working in occupied Tutelo/Moneton land (Blacksburg, Virginia). He works with an expanded photographic practice to critically engage with architecture, technology, and the environment. Construction and fabrication are recurring metaphors in his work, which inhabits an ambiguous space between truth and fiction. Borowski approaches the built environment as a kind of fiction in order to show that design is not neutral, but reflects political values, personal biases, and desires. His work has been exhibited at the Soho Photo Gallery (NY), Site:Brooklyn (NY), The Colorado Photographic Arts Center (CO), Candela Gallery (VA), the Prairie Center for the Arts (IL), The Czong Institute of Contemporary Art (Korea), and Espace Projet (Montreal, QC). He is a 2019 recipient of a Graham Foundation grant. He received his MFA in Art and Design from the University of Michigan in 2011, and a BFA in Photography from the University of New Mexico in 2003. Michael is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Visual Arts at Virginia Tech
ADAM CHIN
Adam Chin is a fine art photographer who spent a career as a computer graphics artist for TV and film. He was one of the original employees of Pacific Data Images, a pioneering computer graphics studio which later became part of Dreamworks Animation. Adam did computer graphics lighting on the Shrek, Madagascar, How to Train Your Dragon, and Kung Fu Panda series of animated feature films.
Adam practices using Machine Learning neural networks trained on databases of real photography to render images. By augmenting traditional photography with neural networks, he is exploring the concept of how much information is contained in a given photograph.
Adam studied darkroom photography under Barry Umstead at Rayko Photography in San Francisco. From 1995-2000, he was a board member and chairperson of Intersection for the Arts, a multi-disciplinary arts organization in San Francisco. In 2020, he was named one of the Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50 photo portfolio award winners, and in 2022 he won the 30 Over 50: In Context award from the Center for Fine Art Photography. Adam has a MS in Computer Science from Stanford and a BS in Computer Science from Yale. He lives in San Francisco.
RASHED HAQ
Rashed Haq is a Bangladeshi-American artist, scientist and technologist. He learned photography in the darkroom in Rochester, NY and was trained as a mathematical physicist, going on to do research in quantum cloaking, quantum computing and the physics of black holes. He then worked in Silicon Valley developing innovative applications of artificial intelligence and robotics. He was awarded the Robotics Innovation Award by Robotics Business Review in 2022, and was nominated for the AI Innovator of the Year Award by AI Business in 2019. His 2020 book “Enterprise AI Transformation” with Wiley Press was named one of the “100 Best Technology eBooks of All Time” by Book Authority.
Rashed uses a combination of photography and software algorithms in his artistic practice, many of the techniques having been used in software engineering. He has recently had over 40 solo and group exhibitions across North America, and his work is in various private and corporate collections. He was awarded the Art+Science award from Lenscratch, and the COMPAS Photography award from Oxford University.
An accomplished AI and technology visionary, he has spent over 20 years helping companies transform and create sustained competitive advantage. With an eye toward the future and what’s possible at the intersection of technology, business, data, and algorithms, Rashed has spearheaded advanced analytics work to help companies create new products and services, generate revenue, cut costs, and reduce risk. He is the Vice President of Robotics at Cruise, one of the leading autonomous vehicle companies. Previously he was the Global Head of AI & Robotics and Group Vice President at Publicis Sapient, a global leader in digital transformation. Prior to Sapient, he conducted research in physics at the Los Alamos National Lab and the Institute for Theoretical Science. He has previously served on the AI Advisory Board of the Computing Technology Industry Association, and on the Board of Directors of FotoFest.
NOELLE MASON
Noelle Mason (b. 1977, USA) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work is about the subtle seductiveness of power facilitated by systems of visual and institutional control. Noelle's work has been shown at the Ringling Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece, and at Phest International Festival of Photography in Monopi, Italy. She is the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation Artist Grant, Jerome fellowship, the Florida Prize for Contemporary Art, the Southern Prize and most recently the LensCulture Art Photography Award, the PHmuseum Grant Prize, the Center Sante Fe Director’s Choice Award and the Female in Focus award from the British Journal of Photography.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION:
Machine Vision is a survey of tech-based photographic works by Michael Borowski, Kurt Caviezel, Adam Chin, Rashed Haq, Noelle Mason, Drew Nikonowicz, Maija Tammi, and Corinne Vionnet. This exhibition explores our evolving creative relationship with new technologies, especially where our subjects and original sources are mediated in part by computers and/or industrial science.
Machine Vision is on view at Candela Gallery through Saturday, April 29, 2023.