August 1, 2019
ArtsUW Roundup: The American Superhero, 500 Years of Prints, and more
In the arts, visit an exhibition of portraits and stories that celebrates differences, highlights our commonalities, and embraces what makes us each uniquely American, explore a collection of prints that date back to the 1490s, and more!
The American Superhero: A Portrait & Storytelling ProjectPhoto by Nate Gowdy
Exhibition | The American Superhero
July 25 – October 4 | UW Tower Mezzanine Lounge
There is a superhero within us all, regardless of our nation of birth, beliefs, orientation, gender identity, race, abilities, or family makeup. This collection of portraits and stories celebrates those differences, highlights our commonalities, and embraces what makes us each uniquely American.
Inspired by New York City-based cartoonist, speaker, and performance artist Vishavjit Singh, aka Sikh Captain America, Nate Gowdy, Vishavjit Singh, Christie Skoorsmith, Gregory L. Evans, and Stephen P. Smith present 35 American superheroes whose stories of resilience and tenderness exemplify life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Included in the collection are Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, former Houston Mayor Annise Parker, and activist Aleksa Manila.
Free | More info
Articles about project:
Crosscut: Americans assemble: Meet the artist capturing the superhero in all of us
The Seattle Globalist: “An American Superhero” explores the diverse origin stories of everyday people
Real Change: American Superhero: Sikh Captain America is enlisting more champions
500 Years of Prints
August 8, 6:30 pm | Henry Art Gallery
Explore the depth and breadth of a collection of prints that date back to the 1490s and get a sense of how the art and science of printmaking has developed over time.
Free | More info and rsvp
Graduate Student Dance Research Symposium
August 16, noon | Meany Studio Theatre
University of Washington second year MFA candidates in dance present cutting-edge original research.
Free | More info
Exhibition | James Coupe: Exercises in Passivity
August 1 – 24 | Jacob Lawrence Gallery
“I’m not a robot.” Check. Now click on all the boxes with traffic lights, pedestrian crossings, or shop fronts to prove it, while your answers help train an algorithm for a self-driving car. Unlike the Turing Test, which asks computers to convince us they are human, today, humans are perpetually asked to convince computers that they are not robots. The specter of full automation has finally arrived. In 2013, Amazon patented a design for a mobile “worker cage” that would protect warehouse employees from hazardous encounters with their robot colleagues. Five years later, they disabled the “laugh” command for Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant, after a series of troubling incidents. Meanwhile, over six million songs currently posted by users on Spotify have never been played by a human listener, and half a million people perform “Human Intelligence Tasks” on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk crowdworker platform. What remains for us — and who does “us” include? Exercises in Passivity is an exhibition of new work by James Coupe that asks what makes us human in a post-AI society by examining the impact of automation on labor, affect, empathy, and instrumentalization.
