Bio
Ahna Girshick is an interdisciplinary artist and research scientist, who investigates the primal beauty and connections between human and AI visual perception. Working with algorithms, photography, paint, and installation, Ahna reimagines her scientific research through materiality and reclaims it through her personal lens as a female computer scientist/neuroscientist.
Ahna holds a PhD from UC Berkeley in Vision Science, was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Neural Science at NYU and at UC Berkeley’s Department of Computer Sciences, holds a BS and MS in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota, and has published over 20 peer-reviewed publications and five patent applications. She is the recipient of an NIH NRSA three-year postdoctoral fellowship, a DOE Computational Sciences four-year graduate fellowship, and was named by the AI conference RE•WORK to their list of “30 Influential Women Advancing AI" in 2019.
As an artist and producer in the early 2010s, she created interactive musical data visualization experiences in collaboration with musicians Philip Glass and Björk and the new media artist Scott Snibbe. These works were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (NY), The Contemporary Jewish Museum (SF), and The Barbican Centre (London). Since 2021, she has focused on illuminating the invisible inner perpetual states of humans and AIs, which she has exhibited through Southern Exposure (SF), Gearbox Gallery (Oakland), Hera Gallery (Rhode Island), Ely Center for Contemporary Art (New Haven), and ARC Gallery (Chicago).
Artist Statement
My art explores the urgent yet timeless qualities of AI’s visual perception, in contrast to the charged topic of AI’s generative abilities. The urgency is due to AI perception’s pervasiveness, rapid technological evolution, and potential for real-world consequences. The timelessness is due to its entwinement with human visual perception, which AI perception was designed to simulate.
The human-AI similarities are greatest in their neural networks’ most primitive layers, where neurons filter light searching for basic visual relationships such as oriented edges, perhaps the simplest form of visual bias. Through paintings, photos, and window installations, I overlay these filters on natural imagery — the evolutionary “training data” for human vision — to ask the viewer to reflect on the internal opaque processes of both AIs and humans. The grid of filters, reminiscent of bullet holes, references the ubiquitous technical process of scanning our lives’ pixels.
I also employ AI perceptual algorithms that identify familiar objects in photos, similar to how painters have historically translated their world to canvases, capturing their subjects’ optics and meaning. Using the algorithms’ “segmentation maps”, I capture AI’s interpretation of natural objects – trees, plants, sky, rivers – as mysterious silhouetted contours and artificially-colored fragments. These vaguely familiar shapes are a visual code of AI interpretations whose design demands critical examination.
My art’s goal is to create an experiential, tangible understanding of the abstract process of AI vision, a feeling of universal connection and beauty with human vision, while questioning AI’s flaws and its fraught interconnection with human perception.
CV
Link to: Curriculum Vitae as PDF
Education
Postdoctoral Fellow in Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 2010-11
Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Neural Science, New York University, NY, NY, 2007-10
Ph.D. in Vision Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 2007
M.S. in Computer Science (Cog Sci + Sci Comp minors), University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, MN, 1999
B.S. in Computer Science (AI + HCI emphases), University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, MN, 1996
Group Art Exhibitions
2024 Curating AI, 120710, Berkeley, CA
2024 Doomscapes and the Digital Beyond, ARC Gallery, Chicago, IL
2024 A Way of Seeing Everything & Nothing, Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT
2023 Coded Creativity: Exploring the Intersection of Art and Algorithms, HERA Gallery, Wakefield, RI
2023 Within Sight or From Imagination, Gearbox Gallery. Oakland, CA
2023 Espirit de L’Escalier, I Like Your Work
2022 Mirror Material, Curator Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Southern Exposure, San Francisco, CA
2015 NEAT: New Experiments in Art and Technology, Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA
2014 Digital Revolution, Barbican Centre, London, UK
2014 Sónar, Barcelona, Spain
2013 Sound in Space, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
2013 Sónar, Barcelona, Spain
2013 Zero1 Garage, San Jose, CA
Select Press
30 Influential Women Advancing AI in 2019 RE•WORK, Dec 17, 2019.
Women Breaking Barriers in A.I. [interview with Ahna] OnlineEducation. September 2018.
It’s Almost Impossible to Make Bad Music with this App. FastCo Design, Dec. 9, 2013.
REWORK_ (Philip Glass Remixed) app by Snibbe Studio. WIRED, Dec. 13, 2012.
A Magical App For Exploring A Philip Glass Remix By Beck. FastCo Design, Dec. 13, 2012.
Exploring Snibbe's New App Album For Philip Glass' REWORK_, Featuring Beck, Amon Tobin, Nosaj Thing, And More. The Creator’s Project, Dec 13, 2012.
REWORK (Philip Glass Remixed) by Snibbe Studio. Creative Applications Network, Dec 13, 2012.
Metric Release 'Synthetica' Companion Album and App. Rolling Stone, Nov. 12, 2013.
Passion Pit: Gossamer – New interactive music app by Scott Snibbe Studio. Creative Applications Network, July 19, 2012.
The Probabilistic Mind. Science News feature. 180:18. Oct. 18, 2011.
Prior & prejudice. Nature Neuroscience “News & Views”, 14:943–945. July 26, 2011.
Nintendo 3DS and young eyes: Should parents really be concerned? Yahoo! Games, March 23, 2011. [also in The Daily Mail, March 28, 2011]
Nintendo issues warning to kids wanting new 3DS handheld, St. Petersburg Times, January 6, 2011. [also in Minneapolis Star Tribune, January 17, 2011]
Nintendo Warns Parents Of Eye Risks In 3-D Game, National Public Radio, January 3, 2011.
A Real Science of Mind, The New York Times, December 19, 2010.
3-D Movies Can Induce Headaches and Sickness, The New York Times, February 8, 2010.
Scientists uncover why picture perception works, Science Daily News, September 21, 2005.
Select Public Speaking and Podcast Interviews
Apr 2022 California College of the Arts (guest lecture for Cognitive Science), San Francisco, CA
Apr 2021 LOKA podcast interview of Ahna Girshick, Palo Alto, CA
Mar 2021 AI and Storytelling: Combining data science and DNA, with Dr Ahna Girshick | The Teens in AI Podcast, London
Jan 2020 RE•WORK Women in AI, San Francisco, CA
Nov 2018 Open Data Science Conference, San Francisco, CA
May 2018 Rev Data Science, San Francisco, CA
Mar 2018 Women in Data Science, Stitchfix, San Francisco, CA
Mar 2018 Rootstech, Salt Lake City, UT
Nov 2015 Smart Everything, UC Berkeley, CA
Oct 2015 GSV Pioneer Summit, Redwood City, CA
Aug 2015 Smart Data Forum, San Jose, CA
July 2015 TTI/Vanguard Innundata, Philadelphia, CA
Oct 2013 Guest Lecture, Data Visualization course, University of San Francisco, CA
Feb 2013 ZERO1 Garage, San Jose, CA
Nov 2012 Bay Area Science Festival, Berkeley, CA
Jan 2012 Intel Labs, Experience Insights Lab, Hillsboro, OR
Sep 2010 Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, CA
Jun 2010 SRI International, Artificial Intelligence Center, Menlo Park, CA
May 2008 Vision Sciences Society, Naples, FL
Apr 2007 Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany
Apr 2007 Albert Einstein School of Medicine, Department of Neuroscience, New York, NY
Apr 2007 UC San Francisco, Keck Center for Integrative Neuroscience, San Francisco, CA
Mar 2007 Pictures in Art, Science & Engineering, Berkeley, CA
Mar 2007 University of Rochester, Center for Visual Science, Rochester, NY
Jul 2006 New York University, Department of Psychology, New York, NY
Jun 2006 Université Paris 5, Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, Paris, France
May 2006 Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, San Francisco, CA
May 2006 Vision Sciences Society, Sarasota, FL
Sep 2005 Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany
Aug 2005 European Conference on Visual Perception, La Coruña, Spain
Jun 2005 Computational Sciences Graduate Fellowship Conference, Washington, DC
Mar 2005 UC Berkeley Vision Science Retreat, Walker Ranch, CA
Aug 2004 European Conference on Visual Perception, Budapest, Hungary
Jul 2004 Bay Area Vision Research Day, Berkeley, CA
May 2004 Vision Sciences Society, Sarasota, FL
Jun 2000 Non-Photorealistic Rendering and Animation Conference, Annecy, France
Aug 1999 SIGGRAPH (Computer Graphics Conference), Los Angeles, CA
Scientific Publications and Patents
~50 publications, ~5 patents, ~5k citations. See list on Google Scholar