Rhizome and the New Museum Announce Participants for 7x7 2024

The 7x7 2024 participants are:

• Quantum physicist Dr. Stephon Alexander with comedian, artist, and musician Reggie Watts

• Replika AI CEO and Founder Eugenia Kuyda with artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson

• Boston Dynamics Director of Human-Robot Interaction David Robert with artist Miriam Simun

• Nym Technologies CEO and Co-Founder Harry Halpin with artist Tomás Saraceno

• Ginkgo Bioworks Head of Creative Christina Agapakis with artist Xin Liu

• Runway CEO and Co-Founder Cristóbal Valenzuela with comedian, writer, and actor Ana Fabrega

• Engineer and entrepreneur Alan Steremberg with artist Rindon Johnson

  “Neural networks and other AI systems have long been topics of note at 7x7. With these technologies now widely available, 7x7 2024 takes an expansive but critical view of their role in society,” notes Rhizome Co-Executive Director Michael Connor. “The participants look beyond the dreams of apocalypse and the endless drive to extract, and ask, what new kinds of collaborations and entanglements will AI enable?”

  Since its inception in 2010, 7x7 has been a catalyst in the evolution of art and technology collaboration, often acting as a mirror of significant cultural contexts and an indicator of emerging trends in our increasingly technological society. The site of the creation of the first NFT by artist Kevin McCoy and technologist Anil Dash in 2014, 7x7 has catalyzed some of the earliest creative experimentations and critical engagements with machine learning, blockchain, and social media technologies. Past participants include Ai Weiwei, American Artist, Alex Chung, Miranda July, David Karp, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Trevor McFedries, Jonah Peretti, Aza Raskin, Tabita Rezaire, Hito Steyerl, Martine Syms, and Meredith Whittaker, to name a few.

  “In recent years, the art and tech ecosystem has expanded to encompass a wider range of institutions, companies, and stakeholders. The relationship between artists and technologies, platforms, and collaborations has grown increasingly complex," states Xinran Yuan, Producer and Co-Curator of 7x7 2024. "To plan the 2024 edition in this evolving context, we spent time refocusing on what makes 7x7 unique: it is a risk-tolerant, experimental, and most importantly, public forum. Here, what is foregrounded is not only the intriguing outcomes of such collaborations, but also the negotiations, uncertainties, even failures that are integral to the shaping of these collaborative ideas, knowledge, and creations.”

  “As part of our twenty-year affiliation with Rhizome, the New Museum is gratified to convene this critical gathering on a topic of such importance to contemporary culture,” said Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director of the New Museum. “7x7 has long been a key part of our vision to make the New Museum a campus for new art and new ideas, supporting not only the display of art but knowledge creation in many forms.”