Ken Goldberg utilizes his extensive background in computers and engineering to humanize the stereotypically ‘impersonal’ field of technology. His work includes a live garden tended by a robot which is controlled by devotees on the internet; a 1/1-millionth scale model of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater fabricated from silicon; a film about the history of Jewish assimilation in 20th-century America; and even a deep dive into Barbie. He obtained a dual degree in Engineering and Business at the University of Pennsylvania and went on to earn his PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, writing his dissertation on stochastic plans for robotic manipulation.
Goldberg is the director of the AlphaGarden Collective, an ongoing cross-disciplinary robotic artwork and research project funded by NSF and USDA. Involving a robot and 3 x 1.5-meter garden at the UC Berkley Greenhouse, Goldberg and his team use deep learning AI policies to lead the robot to prune and irrigate the garden, speaking to the environmental precipice that we currently inhabit in the face of climate change.
In December of 2023, Ken Goldberg collaborated with dancer Catie Cuan, who performed an eight-hour dance choreography alongside an industrial robot arm, alluding to the essential lifting, cleaning, caring, and maintaining motions performed by workers each day. In the Fall of 2024, Goldberg will collaborate with artist Tiffany Shlain to create an interactive, multi-sensory exhibit for Skirball Cultural Center, drawing inspiration from the Los Angeles landscape, the science of tree dating, AI, and Jewish thought.
Goldberg's projects have exhibited at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco; The Whitney Museum, New York City; Venice Biennale; Pompidou Center, Paris, France; Walker Art Center, Lisbon Biennial, Cordoaria, Lisbon, Portugal; among other international and domestic exhibits and collections.
In addition to being a successful artist, Goldberg is Founding Director of Berkeley's Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium, Professor of Engineering at UC Berkeley, and also Director of the Berkeley Center for New Media. Goldberg currently lives in Mill Valley and has exhibited with Catharine Clark Gallery since 1995.
