Difference Engines
TECHNOLOGY AND IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY ART
Wrightwood 359 (Chicago, IL) Oct 13 – December 16, 2023
How does technology shape our identities and what is the relation between the two? How do the tools we use shape the way we see ourselves? This question is addressed by Difference Engines, a touring exhibition co-curated by Tina Rivers Ryan, PhD, Curator, Buffalo AKG Art Museum and Paul Vanouse, Professor, University of Buffalo. Difference Engines features 17 contemporary artists that engage how technology can challenge systemic forms of oppression, engage communities, and resist prejudice.
In John Perry Barlow’s 1998 “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” he declared the online realm to be free of the ills of the material world, its oppressions and stigmas; race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and dis/ability would become irrelevant, as it was deemed a world of pure mind. Unfortunately, the opposite appears to be true, as online and offline have become one. When we represent our lives, names, selfies and communites on social media, as well as adding hashtags #metoo and #blacklivesmatter, physical and digital identities become the same.
As Rivers-Ryan and Vanouse mention, the prototypical computational device imagined by Babbage in the 1800’s was termed a “Difference Engine,” for the discrimination between numerical values. Now, society is filled with “Difference Machines,” processes and algorithms designed to discriminate the differences between people. Much like Harun Farocki’s analysis of the photographic analysis in the early 20th century to encode biases against ethnicities, criminals, and so on, contemporary devices and algorithms prove much more effective.
The exhibition includes projects spanning the last three decades, from software-based and internet art to animated videos, bioart experiments, digital games, and 3D-printed sculptures. The 20 works on view in Difference Machines exemplify different strategies for adapting technology to artmaking. Artists exhibiting in Difference Machines are:  Morehshin Allahyari, Zach Blas, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, A.M. Darke, Stephanie Dinkins, Hasan Elahi, Sean Fader, Rian Ciela Hammond, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Joiri Minaya, Mongrel, Mendi + Keith Obadike, Sondra Perry, Keith Piper, Skawennati, Saya Woolfalk, and Lior Zalmanson.
Difference Machines: Technology and Identity in Contemporary Art is organized by the Buffalo AKG Art Museum (formerly the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.)  Difference Machines: Technology and Identity in Contemporary Art earned the 2022 Curatorial Award for Excellence from the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC), making it the first major survey of art and technology to be acknowledged by the AAMC.
This exhibition is on display at Wrightwood 659 in Chicago, Illinois from Oct 13 – December 16, 2023, and was exhibited at Albright-Knox Northland (Buffalo, NY,) Beall Center for the Arts (Irvine, CA,) and Gray Area (San Francisco, CA)
