Moderated by Christina Passariello, The Washington Post’s technology editor, this conversation brings together three positions that engage with the cultural footprint of technology in innovative arts practices – from Philosophy (Tobias Rees), Design and digital objects (Martin Grasser) to art and exhibition making (Simon Denny). The panelists will reflect on what working in an interdisciplinary space between their native skillsets as liberal and visual arts practitioners does when it interfaces within the context of technologists and organizations, and some of the takeaways they've learned in the process of foregrounding and insisting on the value of culture in a context where technology is primary.
Christina Passariello is the Washington Post’s deputy business editor, based in San Francisco. She oversees the critical and award-winning coverage of technology and personal finance, and she is leading an internal task force to understand how AI is changing journalism. She has built a team of more than 30 technology reporters and editors in San Francisco, Washington and other locations across the U.S. She is passionate about exploring how technology is changing our world. Christina previously worked at The Wall Street Journal for nearly 14 years, most recently as deputy technology editor in San Francisco. Prior to San Francisco, Christina was the European fashion and luxury correspondent for the Journal, covering everything from catwalks to sweatshops. She was part of the team that won the 2013 Sigma Delta Chi award for reporting on Bangladesh’s garment industry. She previously worked for Business Week, and her work has also appeared in The New York Times, Time Magazine and Rolling Stone. She served as a foreign correspondent in Paris for 14 years and also lived in London. Christina was a John S. Knight fellow at Stanford from 2014 to 2015. She hails from southern California.
Simon Denny lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Intrigued by the cultures around technology, Denny takes the inspiration for his artwork from objects, documents, and images that companies, organizations and states use or produce. His practice involves making compelling material and digital responses to these powerful prompts – often framing his installations, paintings, sculptures, prints, videos and web-based works as case studies based upon events or figures. These include moments in the emergence of cryptocurrencies and other technology paradigm shifts; founders like Peter Thiel and Kim Dotcom and political figures like Margaret Thatcher. Through this careful attention to the cultures of technology and technologists, he has produced special objects that resonate with key economic, cultural and material tendencies within the contemporary world. For Denny, physical and political space and the digital spaces constructed by companies and communities are not distinct entities. Rather, the entanglement of these spaces has become a key point of departure throughout his work.
Martin Grasser is an artist and designer based in the Bay Area. His studio utilizes a systems-driven process focused on abstraction and translation to generate a diverse and ever-evolving body of work.
For the longest time, Tobias was an academic.
He was William Dawson Chair at McGill and Reid Hoffman Professor at Parsons and the New School.
In 2017, he decided to leave the University. After two years as Director of the LA based Berggruen Institute, he launched ToftH.org
In 2023, Rees left ToftH and began building limn.ai
Limn is a focused research organization located at the intersection of philosophical research, art practice, and technology R&D. Its aim is to building interfaces that give access to the non-human cognitive landscapes afforded by AI systems.
In addition, Rees works with the Berlin based Light Arts Space; serves on the board of LACMA’s Art and Technology program; and is about to launch a podcast on AI and the Human. He is also a senior fellow at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR).
