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Sarah Brin

Artengine's UNHANDED

Sarah Brin, an accomplished writer and curator, explores the intricate relationship between art, technology, and community. Brin highlights her experience as a public programs manager at Autodesk’s Pier 9 Workshop, emphasizing its significance as a hub for various discussed projects. She expresses a deep interest in “art that happens in the corner”—art that operates outside traditional institutions and engages underrepresented demographics.

Brin shares her concerns about how, in the realm of digital fabrication and tech-integrated art, form often overshadows personal experience and context. She uses examples like biased AI in Google image searches and the initial racial recognition issues with Microsoft Kinect to illustrate how digital systems can perpetuate human biases. Moreover, she emphasizes the importance of safe spaces and community guidelines to foster inclusivity and prevent harm in diverse environments.

A central theme of Brin’s talk is the potential of digital tools for both creative and destructive ends, a dichotomy she explores with a critical yet optimistic lens. She highlights projects like Project Enable, which uses 3D printing to create prosthetic limbs for children, showcasing how technology can significantly improve lives. Additionally, Brin ponders the aesthetic and communicative possibilities of digital fabrication, referencing scholars like Ian Bogost to discuss how different media influence our understanding and interactions with the world.

Overall, Brin’s discourse is a rich exploration of how digital and physical realms intersect, focusing on the transformative power of community and technology in the arts.

This presentation was part of the symposium Unhanded. In this panel we ask about the variety of new relationships with materials that emerging with the increasing ubiquitousness of digital technologies. With the increased complexity of tools we wonder how do we learn about materials? How do we get to know them? How do we share this knowledge? We can now know the molecular structure of wood or metal without touching it. Is this a more intimate relationship than working directly with our hands? Does it matter? If the objects coming out of digital and mechanical processes are more removed from our handywork, how might they carry the mark of the machine? Should we be able to read the machine in the material?

Sarah Brin specializes in creative partnerships for technology, games, and entertainment. Her projects are known for their visual appeal, playfulness, and broad audience reach.

Professionally, Sarah has extensive experience in building and leading teams that create unprecedented creative technology experiences. She is also skilled in designing processes and programs for organizations undergoing rapid growth. She resides in London with her big dog, Svenska.

Sarah’s projects consistently demonstrate creativity that excites the public and sparks a desire to learn more. She has developed and led joint ventures and partnerships for prestigious brands such as Sony PlayStation, Rolls Royce, Autodesk, Meow Wolf, the European Union, Microsoft, BBC, Aardman Animation, SFMOMA, Google, and many others. One of her aspirations is to develop creative partnerships for A24 and/or David Byrne.

Her work has earned her a BAFTA nomination and awards from Creative Producers International, Red Dot, and the International Game Developers Association.

A question that I’m really curious about when it comes to this conversation on digital and physical and rhetoric. I want to know what is the radical rhetoric of digital fabrication? What types of information, what types of ideas is digital fabrication really, really good at communicating and what are some of its weaknesses? What gets lost when we think about digital fabrication?

As long as there's technological innovation for growth and creativity, there will continue to be technological advances and tools for destruction and war

Organizing Creative Labour

In this conversation Tim Maughan chats with us about digital infrastructure, the role of organized labour in the creative landscape, and the DEL project Artwork_Local404. Join us, as we discuss technology and capitalism, the benefits of organizing, and what form collective action might take. Maughan also talks about how we need to rethink many of the platforms of tools of the digital world as public infrastructure: this may change how we understand what the government could do with them.

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