Digital Mirrors

Digital Mirrors of Materiality

part of Defying Boundaries: MacArthur Fellows at 45*

with Katherine Behar, Nick Benson*, Hideo Mabuchi*, and Camille Utterback*
Moderated by Vanessa Chang

We are all in some way navigating widespread futureshock over paradigm-breaking growth in the power of computation and robotics. Stepping back from the most expansive societal stakes to seek grounding at personal scale, expressive making offers a rich context within which to reflect upon what craft does for the maker, and what is lost or gained when we augment or supplant embodied engagement with digital technologies. If our goal is not just to produce but to make things as a way of being at home in the world, what could we possibly want from the leverage of fabulous machines? Can traditional craft assimilate the expansiveness of the digital? How does this historical moment call for us to affirm the value of practicing heirloom modes of creativity?

This symposium and the exhibition Tangling the Digital: Weaving, Printmaking, Computing (Coulter Art Gallery, September 29 - December 4) serve as final focal points for Digital Mirrors of Materiality, a MacArthur Foundation X-Grant project.

November 4, 3-5:20PM

Denning Family Resource Center, Anderson Collection

Reception to follow, 5:30-6:30PM
McMurtry Building Courtyard

RSVP for the panel here

Photo by Marianne M. Kim

Katherine Behar

Bio

Katherine Behar is an interdisciplinary artist and critical theorist whose work explores intersections of gender, race, class, and labor in contemporary digital culture. Behar is known for projects that mix low and high technologies to create hybrid forms that are by turns humorous and sensuous. For over two decades, her work has brought a feminist materialist perspective to bear on how automation comingles human and nonhuman laborers in perplexingly counterproductive systems. Her recent work on artificial intelligence (AI) places its ambition to automate thought within a long, sordid history of labor automation and labor politics.

Behar is a Creative Capital awardee in Technology. Her artwork has been exhibited throughout North America and Europe. For example, Beall Center for Art+Technology presented her major solo exhibition Ack! Knowledge! Work! and Pera Museum presented a comprehensive survey exhibition and catalog, Katherine Behar: Data’s Entry | Veri Girişi. Behar’s books include Object-Oriented Feminism, And Another Thing: Nonanthropocentrism and Art, Bigger than You: Big Data and Obesity, and BAD Media (forthcoming with David Cecchetto). She is Professor of New Media Arts at Baruch College and The Graduate Center, CUNY.

https://katherinebehar.com/

Photo by David-Hanson

Nick Benson

"Material and Digital Symbolism in Performance"

Bio

Nicholas Benson is a third-generation American stone carver, master letterer, and owner of the historic John Stevens Shop in Newport, Rhode Island.

Founded in 1705, the shop is renowned for the design and carving of lettering in stone. Benson took over leadership of the business from his father in 1993 after studying calligraphy and letterform design at the School of Design in Basel, Switzerland.

His work includes inscriptions for major national civic memorials, as well as universities, institutions, and prominent private commissions. His honors include a National Heritage Fellowship from the NEA, a MacArthur Fellowship, and an honorary doctorate from the Rhode Island School of Design.

He lives in Jamestown, Rhode Island with his wife Alix and son Henry. His daughter Hope lives with her husband Kevin above the John Stevens Shop. Both Hope and Henry are carving stone.

Photo by Rewa Bush

Hideo Mabuchi

"From an idea about a thing to a thing about an idea"

Bio

Hideo Mabuchi received an A.B. in Physics from Princeton University (1992) and a Ph.D. in Physics from Caltech (1998); at Stanford he has held an appointment as Professor of Applied Physics since 2007. He is currently serving on the Committee in Charge for the Program in Modern Thought & Literature and as Denning Family Director of Stanford Arts Institute. Hideo leads a physics research laboratory specializing in quantum optics and physics of computation, teaches interdisciplinary classes that bridge STEM fields with the arts and humanities, and makes craft work as a ceramist and weaver. You can learn more about his multifaceted work on his website. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2000.

Photo by LiPo Ching/Stanford University

Camille Utterback

Bio

Camille Utterback is an internationally acclaimed artist whose interactive installations, generative, site-specific, and reactive works explore the aesthetic and experiential possibilities of linking computational systems to human movement and gesture in visually layered ways. Her work aims to focus attention on the continued relevance and richness of the body in our increasingly mediated world. Utterback’s most recent commission, Fathom, was created for Stanford’s new Computing and Data Science (CoDa) building. This work’s hand-painted and sandblasted glass panels, suspended in the CoDA stairwell, are illuminated by the sun during the day and animated after dark with live computer-generated projections. Fathom references diverse human and material histories of representing, encoding, and interpreting data. As an associate professor in the Department of Art & Art History, and by courtesy, of Computer Science, Utterback teaches studio art courses spanning traditional and digital media such as “Drawing with Code” and “Hybrid Printmaking”. She also works closely with MFA candidates in Stanford’s 10-person interdisciplinary art practice program. Utterback’s website features her extensive work and exhibition history which includes more than fifty shows on four continents. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2009.

Vanessa Chang

Bio

Vanessa Chang builds communities and conversations about art, technology, people, and planet. As Director of Programs at Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology, she develops transdisciplinary programs connecting artists, scientists, and technologists. She has curated exhibitions and public programs at SFMOMA, the Beall Center for Art + Technology, and Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture, and was lead curator with CODAME Art & Tech. Her writing has appeared in Slate, Wired, Noema, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, and her work has been featured in Art in America, Science Magazine, and On the Media, among other venues. Her first book, The Body Digital: A Brief History of Humans and Machines from Cuckoo Clocks to ChatGPT, was published in 2025. She earned a Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University,

This event made possible by John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Funding Good Chaos, Stanford Arts Institute (SAI), the Department of Art and Art History and the Office of the Vice President for the Arts.

This moment calls for creative courage. For 45 years, MacArthur Fellows have expanded the boundaries of possibility by questioning conventions, crossing disciplines, and driving collective progress. Throughout 2026, the Foundation is celebrating the ground-breaking work of the Fellows and inspiring public dialogue through a series of nationwide events and conversations.

Learn more at macfound.org/fellows-45.