Location: Berkeley, CA
Medium: Robotics, installation, film, internet art
Website: goldberg.berkeley.edu
Ken Goldberg was born in 1961 in Ibadan, Nigeria, where his parents taught at the Mayflower Private School, and he grew up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He received dual degrees in Electrical Engineering and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, and MS and PhD degrees in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1990, where an AI course taken in Edinburgh sparked an interest in robotics and artistic potential. He joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1995 and currently holds the William S. Floyd Jr. Distinguished Chair in Engineering, serving as Professor and Chair of the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research Department with secondary appointments in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, Art Practice, the School of Information, and the UCSF Department of Radiation Oncology. He is founding director of UC Berkeley’s Art, Technology, and Culture Lecture Series (established 1997) and holds more than ten US patents. He is represented by Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco and his artwork has appeared in over 70 international exhibitions.
He is married to multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker Tiffany Shlain, with whom he has co-written several award-winning documentary films. The Tribe (2006) was selected for both Sundance and Tribeca; Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death, and Technology (2011) was selected for Sundance; and Why We Love Robots was Emmy-nominated. His Ballet Mori project, performed by the San Francisco Ballet at the San Francisco Opera House to commemorate the 1906 earthquake, won an Isadora Duncan Dance Award in 2007.
Goldberg uses his extensive background in engineering, robotics, and artificial intelligence to make artworks that overturn stereotypes of dehumanization and the impersonal in technology. His work has ranged from the first robot on the Internet — a teleoperated arm that allowed web users to move soil around a Zen garden — to a live garden tended by a robot controlled by internet devotees, to a 1/1,000,000th-scale silicon model of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, to an earthwork that transforms live seismic data into an exuberant display of color. His practice consistently probes what is knowable at a distance, the relationship between presence and representation, and the ways algorithmic systems shape perception and democracy. His most recent collaborative project with Tiffany Shlain, Ancient Wisdom: Trees, Time, and Technology (2024–25), integrates AI tools that allow Bay Area residents to photograph local trees and receive species identification, estimated planting dates, and AI-generated tributes.
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