Photo by Stefanie Schwartz
Exhibition by Artists Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg
Fuses Art with the Science of Tree-Ring Dating
and Artificial Intelligence.
Part of Getty’s Regional Initiative PST ART:
Art and Science Collide
Partners in life and frequent creative collaborators, Bay Area-based artists Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg have worked together on art projects and numerous documentaries, including the Emmy-nominated series The Future Starts Here, which includes episodes “Why We Love Robots,” “Robots, Botox, and Google Glass,” and “Tech Shabbats.” They received multiple awards for their documentary short, The Tribe, “an unauthorized, unorthodox ... history of the Jewish people and the Barbie doll,” which premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and continues to be screened worldwide. Ken Goldberg and Tiffany Shlain have also worked independently for decades as artists—including being shown at the Whitney and at MoMA in New York.
Shlain is an interdisciplinary artist whose works in film, sculpture, and performance explores ideas in feminism, neuroscience, philosophy, technology, and nature.
Goldberg is an artist and professor of engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, where he questions the boundaries between the digital and natural worlds.
They are co-founders of The Association of Free Association.
About Artists
"Artists Ken Goldberg and Tiffany Shlain harness the beauty and power of trees through tree-ring sculptures — two of which are inscribed with milestones in L.A. history. Visitors can also pay homage to the special trees in their lives by submitting information online, which will be turned into tributes by the artists using AI."
October 17, 2024 – March 2, 2025
LOS ANGELES, CA—The Skirball Cultural Center presents Ancient Wisdom for a Future Ecology: Trees, Time & Technology, an evocative exhibit from artists Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg who draw inspiration from dendrochronology (the science of tree-ring dating), Artificial Intelligence, and ancient Jewish texts and traditions to re-examine human narratives and their relationship to nature. The exhibition features six tree-ring sculptures that reimagine our past and collective futures in new ways, a video portrait of Los Angeles that draws from open-source ecology datasets, and an invitation for visitors to create personal tree tributes using AI software. As part of Getty’s landmark regional initiative PST ART: Art and Science Collide, which explores the intersections of art and science, both past and present, the exhibition will be on view from October 17, 2024 to March 2, 2025.
Media Contact: Emma Jacobson-Sive, EJS Media, emma@ejs-media.com, (323) 842-2064
@skirball_la | @gettymuseum | @pstinla
PARTNERS
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Reclaimed redwood sculpture
Einstein described mathematics as “the poetry of logical ideas.” This wordless timeline traces a visual history of science, contrasting the abstraction of math symbols with the materiality of a fallen redwood tree.
Opens at Skirball Cultural Center October 17, 2024
Runs October 17, 2024 to March 2nd, 2025