Artists featured in the Euphrat Museum of Art’s exhibit “Encoding Empathy” have come up with creative ways to express how technology is affecting—and can be used in—their work.

The exhibit, which runs Jan. 30-March 20 at the De Anza College museum, is presented in conjunction with Silicon Valley Reads and its 2025 theme, “Empowering Humanity: Technology for a Better World.”

In that vein, artist Steve Dellicarpini worked with ChatGTP to create “Blue Screen of Red,” a sculptural grid of pulsing fans with GPUs and blue lights that slowly turn red and randomly ramp up in speed. Dellicarpini ended up asking the artificial intelligence program to write the code and title for the work. ChatGTP’s response: “Your art piece speaks to me as a commentary on technological escalation, exhaustion and entropy.”

Virginia San Fratello produces her ceramic ware with help from a robot, creating modern woven and looped textures designed with the programming language G-code.

“Victory Banner of Enlightenment” is an installation of 40 handmade brass singing bowls suspended with interactive electronic and kinetic components and a microcomputer. Artist Nick Dong reinterpreted the ancient concept of victory banners to symbolize the victory of enlightenment rather than war.

When Shannon Wright had no access to a woodshop during the pandemic, she taught herself the rudiments of a 3D modeling program and found the process “immediately rewarding and rather addictive.” “Encoding Empathy” includes her 3D printed sculpture “Exodus II” as well as “Ride,” a thermoformed styrene model with a projected computer animation.

Other artists use more traditional media to illustrate the impacts of digital devices in our lives.

Bing Zhang’s “Touch” and “Subway” reflect on technology’s isolating and alienating tendencies. In the latter work, riders are absorbed in their devices, each in their own world.

“Family Time” by Siana Smith is a portrait of her family spread around their living room, each focused on their own laptop but all playing the same game. Her “Devirtualization” splits a smart phone screen in half, showing the same young woman happily scrolling in one image and frowning as she looks up from her screen in the other.

Illustrations from David Biedrzycki’s children’s book “ARTificial Intelligence” tell the story of Robot, who can’t keep up with the other robots at the warehouse. When he’s sent off for reprogramming, he takes a wrong turn and ends up encountering music, dancing and art.

Robynn Smith is among the artists in the exhibit who use digital images in their work. She integrates images she’s collect during her travels into her mixed media paintings to comment on “humanity’s magnificent opportunities and repeated mistakes.”

Pantea Karimi’s installation of digitally drawn pixel-mirrored prints honor the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement in Iran and are a call for bodily autonomy. She reimagines ancient Persian scenes with faceless, actively subversive female action figures.
Some artists use digital imagery to depict the natural world.

“Worms surface/Mimizu izuru,” an interactive digital artwork by Na Omi Judy Shintani with Colin Wright, is inspired by the 72 micro-seasons calendar adopted in Japan from China in the sixth century and used for over 1,000 years. Their micro-season was in May, when rain showers come and worms surface from the moist earth.

Salma Arastu’s digital and mixed media series “Mycelial Flow” honors mycelium, the underground networks of fungal strands that connect the roots of trees and other plants. The interwoven filaments create an organic internet transmitting information and resources crucial to a forest ecosystem. The artists “finds hope in the power of mycelia to regenerate, activate and heal our environment.”
An artist’s reception for “Encoding Empathy” is set for Saturday, March 15, noon-2 p.m., and will feature refreshments and live music. For additional events and information, visit www.deanza.edu/euphrat/inthemuseum.