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Albright-Knox Northland

Explore Difference Machines: Technology and Identity in Contemporary Art with its curators, University at Buffalo Professor Paul Vanouse and Albright-Knox Assistant Curator Tina Rivers Ryan.

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About the Curators

Paul Vanouse is a Professor of Art and Founding Director of the Coalesce Center for Biological Art at the University at Buffalo. A renowned media artist, his honors include a 2006 Creative Capital grant and the 2019 Golden Nica at PRIX Ars Electronica. Since the 1990s, his projects have foregrounded the social consequences of new technologies. His most recent works include genetic experiments that examine his own Jamaican-American parentage to undermine scientific constructions of race.

Dr. Tina Rivers Ryan joined the Albright-Knox in 2017. Her curatorial projects to date include Introducing Tony Conrad: A Retrospective, with Chief Curator Cathleen Chaffee; We the People: New Art from the Collection, with Peggy Pierce Elfvin Director Janne Sirén; Aria Dean; and Kawita Vatanajyankur: Foul Play. From 2015 to 2017, Ryan was a Curatorial Research Assistant in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. She also previously held internships at MoMA/PS1, the New Museum, and the ICA Boston, and taught courses on contemporary art at MoMA, Columbia University, and the Pratt Institute.

About the Exhibition

Difference Machines: Technology and Identity in Contemporary Art brings together a diverse group of seventeen artists and collectives who creatively reimagine the digital tools that shape our lives. The exhibition includes projects that span the last three decades, ranging from software-based and internet art to animated videos, bioart experiments, digital games, and 3-D printed sculptures. Together, these works explore the aesthetic and social potential of emerging technologies.