Autonomous Agents

Lynn Hershman Leeson is a 68 year old multimedia artist out of California. She has done work with painting, drawing, sculpting, performing, photography, cyber art, robotics, artificial intelligence, and also has made eight full length feature films: Conceiving Ada, Teknolust, and Strange Culture to name a few. She holds a bachelor's degree in Education, Museum Administration and Fine Arts from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and a Master of Fine Arts from San Francisco State University. She is currently Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Davis, and an A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University.

In 1972, she exhibited several wax figures, accompanied by an audiotape of breathing and voices, at the University Art Museum in Berkeley. The museum abruptly canceled the exhibition, claiming that audio had no place in an art museum. This leads me to beg the question: Does audio have a place in art museums? But I digress.

Hershman Leeson’s latest work is an exhibit at the University of Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery entitled Autonomous Agents: The Art and Films of Lynn Hershamn Leeson. This is her first exhibit in the UK and will mainly be a showcase of all of her work, including drawings, paintings, and screenings or her films. Hersman Leeson’s focus is on the concept of “self through work, examining the relationships between the body and machines and the shifting ideas of the real and the virtual”. Her art is a cornucopia of self exploration pieces that aim at portraying the true state of humanity. This collection is sure to do just that. It is going on from now until December 12th in Britain, so if you're across the pond anytime soon, go check it out.

Here is a clip from her movie Teknolust: