Bio
Ahna Girshick is a visual artist and research scientist who investigates a universal set of visual patterns shared by humans, machines, and nature. She combines scientific research, data, and algorithms with light-responsive materials such as glass, mirrors, and video.
In 2010-13, she created interactive musical data visualizations in collaboration with Philip Glass and Scott Snibbe that have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (NY), The Contemporary Jewish Museum (SF), and The Barbican Centre (London). Her artworks exploring human and machine perception and bias have exhibited through Southern Exposure (SF), Ely Center for Contemporary Art (New Haven), Marin Museum of Contemporary Art (CA), 120710 (Berkeley), the University of California School of Law (SF), The Intersection of Art and Technology (TIAT, SF), and in the White Columns registry (NY). In 2025 she was commissioned by Google (SF) to create a three-story site-specific glass installation.
She holds a PhD from UC Berkeley in Vision Science, and was a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley and NYU. She has authored over 20 peer-reviewed technical publications, holds five patents, and has been recognized by the AI conference RE•WORK as one of “30 Influential Women Advancing AI.” She lectures in UC Berkeley’s Cognitive Science program on shared illusions in human and machine perception, and has recently given public talks at The Commonwealth Club of California and The Internet Archive’s Intersection of Art and Technology salon.
Artist Statement
To increase understanding between human and machine, I place myself and my viewer within an experience of machine perception. Using data and algorithm, I amplify the machine’s inner experience and position my imagery in contexts that heighten awareness of seeing itself — windows, mirrors, photos, and video.
A recurring motif in my work is the visual primitive — a scientific term for the powerful visual building blocks I first investigated as a computational neuroscience researcher. These universal patterns shape a shared visual grammar across humans, animals, and machine intelligences. They are foundational to image-based technologies, from security cameras to image generation systems. They also have primal roots in biological vision, evolution, and nature. As they are generally hidden, I excavate visual primitives from landmark open-source machine vision models, and in so doing capture pivotal moments in the history of machine perception.
In this moment of uncertainty between nature, humanity, and machine, I’m grounded by the understanding that this visual language is both timely and timeless — and by the sense of wholeness that comes from weaving my scientific research into my artistic practice.
CV
Link to: Curriculum Vitae as PDF
Education
Postdoctoral Fellow in Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 2010-11
Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Neural Science, New York University, NY, NY, 2007-10
Ph.D. in Vision Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 2007
M.S. in Computer Science (Cog Sci + Sci Comp minors), University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, MN, 1999
B.S. in Computer Science (AI + HCI emphases), University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, MN, 1996
Commissions
2025 The Grammar of Seeing, Google, 188 Embarcadero, San Francisco, CA. Site-specific installation spanning thirteen windows on three floors of Google’s AI building.
Group Art Exhibitions
2025 The Intersection of Art and Technology, San Francisco, CA
Mythologies of Tomorrow, 120710, Berkeley, CA
Ripples, University of California School of Law, San Francisco, CA
2024 ArtFWD, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Novato, CA
Curating AI, 120710, Berkeley, CA
Helping Heads, Personal Space, Vallejo, CA
Doomscapes and the Digital Beyond, ARC Gallery, Chicago, IL
A Way of Seeing Everything & Nothing, Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT
2023 Coded Creativity: Exploring the Intersection of Art and Algorithms, HERA Gallery, Wakefield, RI
Within Sight or From Imagination, Gearbox Gallery. Oakland, CA
Espirit de L’Escalier, I Like Your Work
2022 Mirror Material, Curator Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Southern Exposure, San Francisco, CA
2015 NEAT: New Experiments in Art and Technology, Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA
2014 Digital Revolution, Barbican Centre, London, UK
Sónar, Barcelona, Spain
2013 Sound in Space, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Sónar, Barcelona, Spain
Zero1 Garage, San Jose, CA
Select Press
Ahna Girshick (artist interview), Roborant Review, Sept 17, 2025.
DEXIS, US DOE Office of Science, p.16, 2025
30 Influential Women Advancing AI in 2019 RE•WORK, Dec 17, 2019.
Women Breaking Barriers in A.I. [interview with Ahna] OnlineEducation. September 2018.
It’s Almost Impossible to Make Bad Music with this App. FastCo Design, Dec. 9, 2013.
REWORK_ (Philip Glass Remixed) app by Snibbe Studio. WIRED, Dec. 13, 2012.
A Magical App For Exploring A Philip Glass Remix By Beck. FastCo Design, Dec. 13, 2012.
Exploring Snibbe's New App Album For Philip Glass' REWORK_, Featuring Beck, Amon Tobin, Nosaj Thing, And More. The Creator’s Project, Dec 13, 2012.
REWORK (Philip Glass Remixed) by Snibbe Studio. Creative Applications Network, Dec 13, 2012.
Metric Release 'Synthetica' Companion Album and App. Rolling Stone, Nov. 12, 2013.
Passion Pit: Gossamer – New interactive music app by Scott Snibbe Studio. Creative Applications Network, July 19, 2012.
The Probabilistic Mind. Science News feature. 180:18. Oct. 18, 2011.
Prior & prejudice. Nature Neuroscience “News & Views”, 14:943–945. July 26, 2011.
Nintendo 3DS and young eyes: Should parents really be concerned? Yahoo! Games, March 23, 2011. [also in The Daily Mail, March 28, 2011]
Nintendo issues warning to kids wanting new 3DS handheld, St. Petersburg Times, January 6, 2011. [also in Minneapolis Star Tribune, January 17, 2011]
Nintendo Warns Parents Of Eye Risks In 3-D Game, National Public Radio, January 3, 2011.
A Real Science of Mind, The New York Times, December 19, 2010.
3-D Movies Can Induce Headaches and Sickness, The New York Times, February 8, 2010.
Scientists uncover why picture perception works, Science Daily News, September 21, 2005.
Select Public Speaking, Panels and Podcast Interviews
Nov 2025 Led workshop on AI transparency for Mozilla Foundation’s Creative Futures Counterstructures residency, The Intersection of Art and Technology, San Francisco, CA
Nov 2025 Art in the Age of AI: Conversations and Creations, panel discussion at Stanford University’s Ctr for Human-Centered AI, Stanford, CA
Oct 2025 Artist talk at The Ampersand Summit, San Francisco, CA
Dec 2024 AI: Threat or Opportunity, Commonwealth Club World Affairs, San Francisco, CA
Apr 2024 Curating AI Panel with Carl Bass, UC Berkeley Prof. Josh Bloom, UC Berkeley Prof. Ken Goldberg, 120710, Berkeley, CA
Apr 2022 California College of the Arts (guest lecture for Cognitive Science), San Francisco, CA
Apr 2021 LOKA podcast interview of Ahna Girshick, Palo Alto, CA
Mar 2021 AI and Storytelling: Combining data science and DNA, with Dr Ahna Girshick | The Teens in AI Podcast, London
Jan 2020 RE•WORK Women in AI, San Francisco, CA
Nov 2018 Open Data Science Conference, San Francisco, CA
May 2018 Rev Data Science, San Francisco, CA
Mar 2018 Women in Data Science, Stitchfix, San Francisco, CA
Mar 2018 Rootstech, Salt Lake City, UT
Nov 2015 Smart Everything, UC Berkeley, CA
Oct 2015 GSV Pioneer Summit, Redwood City, CA
Aug 2015 Smart Data Forum, San Jose, CA
July 2015 TTI/Vanguard Innundata, Philadelphia, CA
Oct 2013 Guest Lecture, Data Visualization course, University of San Francisco, CA
Feb 2013 ZERO1 Garage, San Jose, CA
Nov 2012 Bay Area Science Festival, Berkeley, CA
Jan 2012 Intel Labs, Experience Insights Lab, Hillsboro, OR
Sep 2010 Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, CA
Jun 2010 SRI International, Artificial Intelligence Center, Menlo Park, CA
May 2008 Vision Sciences Society, Naples, FL
Apr 2007 Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany
Apr 2007 Albert Einstein School of Medicine, Department of Neuroscience, New York, NY
Apr 2007 UC San Francisco, Keck Center for Integrative Neuroscience, San Francisco, CA
Mar 2007 Pictures in Art, Science & Engineering, Berkeley, CA
Mar 2007 University of Rochester, Center for Visual Science, Rochester, NY
Jul 2006 New York University, Department of Psychology, New York, NY
Jun 2006 Université Paris 5, Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, Paris, France
May 2006 Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, San Francisco, CA
May 2006 Vision Sciences Society, Sarasota, FL
Sep 2005 Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany
Aug 2005 European Conference on Visual Perception, La Coruña, Spain
Jun 2005 Computational Sciences Graduate Fellowship Conference, Washington, DC
Mar 2005 UC Berkeley Vision Science Retreat, Walker Ranch, CA
Aug 2004 European Conference on Visual Perception, Budapest, Hungary
Jul 2004 Bay Area Vision Research Day, Berkeley, CA
May 2004 Vision Sciences Society, Sarasota, FL
Jun 2000 Non-Photorealistic Rendering and Animation Conference, Annecy, France
Aug 1999 SIGGRAPH (Computer Graphics Conference), Los Angeles, CA
Scientific Publications and Patents
~50 publications, 5 US patents, 5.5k+ citations. See list on Google Scholar