All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

Opening on September 12, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace is among more than 50 exhibitions and programs that will be presented as part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide. Returning with its latest edition, PST ART is a landmark regional event, this time exploring the intersections of art and science, both past and present. PST ART is presented by Getty.

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace at REDCAT addresses one of the most pressing issues of our time—the impact of artificial intelligence—by proposing alternative directions for its future and how it changes the relationship between the human and non-human. In 1967, Caltech poet-in-residence Richard Brautigan imagined a coming future “where mammals and computers/ live together in mutually / programming harmony.” Borrowing its title from Brautigan’s poem, the exhibition and performance series looks to new models of AI proposed by BIPOC, feminist, non-western, and non-binary systems of thought. How can these conceptions of technology and intelligence reclaim AI’s potential? All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace expands public understanding of artificial intelligence by delving into the pressing questions it presents, from how technology alters the understanding of the human and nonhuman connection, to investigating its potential as a liberative tool. 

The exhibition, on view from September 12 to February 23, features the work of Nora Al-Badri, Minne Atairu, Stephanie Dinkins, Mashinka Firunts Hakopian with Dahlia Elsayed and Andrew Demirjian, Interspecifics, Kite, Charmaine Poh, Sarah Rosalena, and Kira Xonorika and a screening by Manthia Diawara. The performance series includes Back to Back Theatre, Kite, Interspecifics, MUXX, rafa esparza, and Annie Dorsen.

Back to Back Theatre’s The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes, presented on September 26–28, crafted and performed by an ensemble of neurodivergent actors, considers human rights, sexual politics, and relationships with technology. Kite (Music, BFA ‘14) and Interspecifics bring together machine learning technologies, sound, the body, and Indigenous cosmologies in The body is the interface on November 2. In Annie Dorsen’s, Prometheus Firebringer, presented January 24–25, 2025, a predictive text model generates speculative versions of the Greek myth of Prometheus, who stole the gods’ fire to give to humans, engaging the audience in reflections on power, knowledge, and doubt.

Manthia Diawara’s AI: African Intelligence explores the contact zones between African rituals of possession among traditional fishing villages of the Atlantic coast of Senegal and the emergence of new technology frontiers known as Artificial Intelligence on September 16, 2024.

On December 7, REDCAT and CAP UCLA co-present Live Night: Cruising Bodies, Spirits and Machines, a celebratory evening at the 1920 iconic three-story and 1,600-seat United Theater on Broadway in Downtown LA. The evening will feature experimental performances by LA-based artist rafa esparza, Mexico City/Oaxaca-based collective MUXX, among other artists that engage with machines, AI, and avatars coded in trans-migrant and ancestral futures. Performances and DJ sets will take place throughout the theater, the three-story grand lobby, and stage.

The exhibition is funded in part with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation.