machinekind

When: September 25 – December 13, 2025

Where: Stirek Gallery

Gallery Hours:

Tuesday - Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Saturdays, 9 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Sunday and Monday, Closed

Don't have a campus parking pass but want to visit Stirek Gallery during the week? Use the following pay station codes, on us!

1-Hour Code for B and C Lots: 124246
2-Hour Code for B and C Lots: 124247
Please note that these codes must be used only for viewing Stirek Gallery on Tuesdays through Fridays during paid parking hours.

Gallery Tours:

Begin 90 minutes before most events at PRAx
Saturdays:
- 2:30 p.m.
- 3 p.m.
- 3:30 p.m.

The term human element is one that comes up often in these conversations. In some cases, it’s simply a euphemism for the ability to be wrong. But in others, it’s something else, a catch-all term for art and uncertainty and emotion. It’s either incidental […] or it’s the whole point.

- Emma Baccellieri, The Robots Are Coming

Many who study how technology is created, absorbed, and adapted talk about the need to collectively buy into a particular vision for the future. The imagery we see is often white paneled robots –– neutral, orderly, and objective. We are promised that the value “Artificial Intelligence” will bring us is 'efficiency'; better: medical care, teaching, lending, commuting, and relationships. Yet, this imagery obscures the invisible frameworks –– both material and cultural –– that are required to construct this future.

The exhibition machinekind aims to explore the liminal space between machine-generated efficiency and the poignant and sometimes valuable inefficiencies that accompany human behavior. What vision of a future built on machine-collaboration do we hope for? When and how do we want artificial intelligence making decisions with us, or altogether for us? As those invested in the technological innovation behind machine-kind market dreams of a world made easier, what elements of human social interaction might be lost or reinterpreted in the process?

machinekind invites the viewer to explore the notion of artifice as it relates to the tangible, cultural, and ethical consequences of AI. The invited artists engage with questions of outsourcing care and connection, the often-biased logics embedded in data models, the humor in glitches, and the moments humankind and “machinekind” recognize one another in unexpected contexts.

Included artists: American Artist, David Bowen, Tyanna Buie, Kate Crawford + Vladan Joler, Jake Elwes, Lauren Lee McCarthy + Kyle McDonald, Mimi Onuhoa, Risa Puno + Alexander Taylor

Curated by: Alicia Patterson and Ashley Stull Meyers

Image Credit:

Header Image: Jake Elwes
Neon Image (Bottom Left): American Artist
Robot Image (Bottom Right): David Bowen