Skirball Tapes: Şerife Wong

Şerife (Sherry) Wong is a Turkish-Kānaka Maoli artist investigating artificial intelligence, power, and belief through her work at Icarus Salon. Her work has been honored with many awards, including a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, a research fellowship at the Berggruen Institute, a Mozilla Creative Award, a Salzburg Global fellowship, and a Creative Capital award. As an affiliate of O’Neil Risk Consulting and Algorithmic Auditing and an affiliate research scientist at Kidd Lab, UC Berkeley, Şerife addresses the societal impacts of AI. She serves on the boards of Gray Area and Tech Inquiry, and has served on the jury for Ars Electronica, Burning Man, and Rockefeller Foundation.

She is a frequent collaborator with the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford where she has merged conceptual art with social sciences to foster dialogue on who is a stakeholder on AI governance and our political economy after COVID-19. Previously, she co-created the Impact Program at Autodesk Pier 9 and was assistant editor of Artnet Magazine. Currently, Şerife is working on three projects: educating the public on AI by performing as the satirical character “Artificial Life Coach” on social media, exploring blood quantum policy in Hawaii as a lens for understanding AI epistemics, and partnering with Global Voices to analyze data narratives in El Salvador, Brazil, Türkiye, Sudan, and India. She lives and works in San Francisco where she is a member of the art and DJ collective Brass Tax.

Catharine Stimpson is a University Professsor at New York University. Currently the editor of a book series for the University of Chicago Press, she was the founding editor of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. Her many other publications include a novel, Class Notes; a selection of essays, Where the Meanings Are: Feminism and Cultural Spaces; and a book on Gertrude Stein, which is under contract to the University of Chicago Press. In addition, more than 150 of her monographs, essays, stories, and reviews have appeared in Transatlantic Review, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Critical Inquiry, boundary 2, and other publications. Dean Stimpson is the Chair of the National Advisory Committee of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and past president of the Association of Graduate Schools. She is former chair of the New York State Humanities Council, the Ms. Magazine Board of Scholars, and the National Council for Research on Women, as well as past president of the Modern Language Association. She serves on the boards of other educational and cultural organizations, and from 1994-2000, was on the board of PBS. She has been awarded both Fulbright and Rockefeller Humanities Fellowships, as well as grants from the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.