Artist Registry
The White Columns Curated Artist Registry is an online platform for emerging and under-recognized artists to share images and information about their respective practices. The Registry seeks to create a context for artists who have yet to benefit from wider critical, curatorial or commercial support. To be eligible, artists cannot be affiliated with a commercial gallery in New York City.
To apply to the Registry, click here. Join our mailing list here to receive our open call announcement and other programming updates. For any further questions about the Registry, please contact us at registry@whitecolumns.org.
RESUME
Bio
Ahna Girshick is an interdisciplinary artist and research scientist who explores visual perception in humans and artificial intelligences. She holds a BS and MS in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota, a PhD from UC Berkeley in Vision Science, and was a postdoctoral fellow in Neural Science at NYU.
Ahna’s art practice has been interwoven with her research career and she thrives by working at their intersection points. In 2010-13, as an artist and producer, she created interactive musical data visualizations in collaboration with artist Scott Snibbe, composer Philip Glass and other musicians which have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (NY), The Contemporary Jewish Museum (SF), and The Barbican Centre (London). More recently, she has exhibited at San Francisco’s Southern Exposure Gallery (2022), Hera Gallery (Rhode Island, 2023), The Ely Center for Contemporary Art (New Haven, CT, 2023), ARC Gallery (Chicago, 2024), 120710 (Berkeley, CA, 2024), Personal Space (Vallejo, CA, 2024), and MarinMOCA (Novato, CA, 2024).
Resume
Studio at 120710 Gallery, Berkeley, CA
Group Art Exhibitions
2024 Ripples, University of California School of Law, San Francisco, CA
2024 ArtFWD, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Novato, CA
2024 Helping Heads, Personal Space, Vallejo, CA
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, Southern Exposure, curator Tiger Strikes Asteroid, San Francisco, CA
2015 NEAT: New Experiments in Art and Technology, Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA
2014 Sónar 2014, Barcelona, Spain
2014 Digital Revolution, Barbican Centre, London, UK
2013 Sónar 2013, Barcelona, Spain
2013 Zero1 Garage, San Jose, CA
2013 Sound in Space, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
2012 Animated concert visuals for Passion Pit (with Scott Snibbe), Webby Awards (NY)
2011 Animated concert visuals for Björk (with Scott Snibbe), Bestival, UK
2011 Animated concert visuals with Scott Snibbe, Pop-Up Magazine, San Francisco's Symphony Hall
Education
Postdoctoral Fellow in Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 2010-11
Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychology and Neuroscience, New York University, NY, NY, 2007-10
Ph.D. in Vision Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 2007
M.S. in Computer Science (Cognitive 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
Recognitions
2024 Over 20 years, 50+ scientific publications, ~5 US patents in vision, AI, data visualization with 5k+ citations
2019 RE•WORK 30 Influential Women Advancing AI in 2019
2014 Webby Award Honoree (for Synthetica, with Scott Snibbe)
2013 Apple’s Best App of the Year Award for Art & Music (for Gravilux, with Scott Snibbe)
2013 Webby Award Honoree (for REWORK_, with Scott Snibbe)
2013 D&AD InBook Award for Digital Design (for REWORK_, with Scott Snibbe)
2013 ZKM App Art Award for Technical Innovation (for Oscilloscoop, with Scott Snibbe)
2009 Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NIH/NEI, 3-year fellowship)
2001 Computational Sciences Graduate Fellowship (DOE, 4-year fellowship)
Published Art Apps (with Scott Snibbe)
2013 METRIC Synthetica for iOS, 2014 Webby Award Honoree
2013 Oscilloscoop for iOS & LEAP, ZKM App Art Award for Technical Innovation
2013 Passion Pit Gossamer for iOS
2012 Gravilux for MacOS & Android, Apple’s Best App of the Year Award for Art & Music
2012 REWORK_ (Philip Glass Remixed) for iOS, Webby Award Honoree, D&AD InBook Award
2013 MotionPhone for iOS
Select Press
30 Influential Women Advancing AI in 2019 RE•WORK, Dec 17, 2019.
Women Breaking Barriers in A.I. [interview] 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.
Step Into an Optical Illusion. Science Friday. Oct 12, 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 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 Lectures & Podcast Interviews
2024 Invited talk, Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco, CA
2022 Guest Lecture, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA
2021 LOKA podcast interview of Ahna Girshick
2021 AI and Storytelling: Combining data science and DNA, with Dr Ahna Girshick, Teens in AI Podcast
2020 RE•WORK Women in AI, San Francisco, CA
2018 Open Data Science Conference, San Francisco, CA
2018 Rev Data Science, San Francisco, CA
2015 TTI/Vanguard Innundata, Philadelphia, CA
2013 Guest Lecture, Data Visualization course, University of San Francisco, CA
2013 ZERO1 Garage, San Jose, CA
2012 Intel Labs, Experience Insights Lab, Hillsboro, OR
2010 Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, CA
2007 Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany
2006 New York University, Department of Psychology, New York, NY
2006 Université Paris 5, Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, Paris, France
2005 Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany
2005 European Conference on Visual Perception, La Coruña, Spain and Budapest, Hungary
2000 Non-Photorealistic Rendering and Animation Conference, Annecy, France
1999 SIGGRAPH, Los Angeles, CA