Nettrice R. Gaskins

What I’ve Been Up To

My AI-generated images were featured on two journal covers of Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, a peer-reviewed journal published by the Publications Unit, Department of English, Illinois State University. Black Listening is currently available and Outta Sight is coming soon.

My AI-generated artworks are featured by White Snake Projects in the world premiere of “Is This America?”, an opera that tells the story of Fannie Lou Hamer, the Mississippi activist who galvanized Black voter registration in her home state despite overwhelming odds. The show closes on Sunday, September 22, 2024.

Four of my AI-generated Afro Surrealist Carnival portraits are on view at the Ulrich Museum of Art in Wichita, KS through December 7, 2024. The title of the show is Dream Machine: Fantasy, Surreality, and Play.

My AI-generated portrait honoring Faith Ringgold is now an outdoor mural thanks to the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) in downtown Brooklyn, on time for Juneteenth! The mural will be on view through September 2025.

My GenAI assisted portraits are featured in the Omni/IMAX film, The Heart of New England, currently on view at the Museum of Science Boston.

My AI-generated portraits are part of Royalty Abstracted at Rush Arts Gallery in Philadelphia, PA through July 28, 2023.

My keynote, “Generative AI & Community Engagement” was part of the 2023 Alliance for Community Media conference at BRIC, a leading arts and media institution, in Brooklyn, NY.

Three of my AI-generated images related to Octavia Butler and her Parables series of novels were on view as part of the “Parables Experience” at the Parable Pavilion for MozFest 2023. This open-air, virtual exhibition featured 3D design by Guada Labs: Ainslee Alem Robson, and Kidus Hailesilassie, sound design by Carlos Johns-Davila and graphics by Wesley Taylor and Hyung Cho.

Several images from my “Rosies” series is on view at MassArt x SoWa in Boston, MA as part of Speculative Futurisms, an inaugural Graduate Faculty and Staff Exhibition, curated by Kelsey Halliday Johnson of SPACE gallery in Portland, Maine. The show closes April 23, 2023.

On January 20, a few of my AI-generated images were featured in “Shock Value,” a spoken word poetry & art event at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center in Pittsburgh, PA.

My article "Interrogating Algorithmic Bias: From Speculative Fiction to Liberatory Design" has been published online in TechTrends.

My field review, “Interrogating AI Bias through Digital Art,” was featured by Just-Tech.

“Greg Tate” was part of a visual tribute exhibit that was mounted by Photoville in collaboration with The Tate Family and Lincoln Center.

I was a recipient of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech Distinguished Alumni Awards for 2022.

“Sunset” was featured on the cover of Art New England May/June 2022.

“Bantu” was featured on the cover of the Journal of Public Culture, Vol. 34, Issue 1 (96).

“Janeen” was featured in Catalyst Journal’s Spring 2022 issue w/ a Special Section on Global Fertility Chains & the Colonial Present of Assistant Reproductive Technologies, guest-edited by Sigrid Vertommen, Bronwyn Parry, and Michal Nahman.

My portrait of the late Greg Tate is on view in Fort Greene, Brooklyn (Lafayette Avenue and Fort Greene Place, at Fulton St.). The vinyl version of this image took MoCADA over six hours to install on February 12, 2022, and stands over 20 ft high. The mural is on view through April 2023.

“Primavera” was on view at Carnegie Hall as part of The Black Angel of History art exhibition. The show was open through March 2022.

My portrait of Harriet Tubman was featured in a special issue of Ms. Magazine titled the "Harriet Tubman Bicentennial Project.” This includes an interactive website and a commemorative section in their print magazine to recognize the 200th-anniversary birth of Tubman. The project will close out on March 10, 2022 (the date when she died) but the website is still up and will remain so.

In 2021 I joined the Ford Foundation’s Global Fellows cohort to build a global community of 72 active fellows working to combat inequality.

I was part of a team that launched a Mozilla-sponsored Carnival AI project, which featured a dance app that uses artificial intelligence to celebrate Carnival dance across the Caribbean.

My first, full-length book, Techno-Vernacular Creativity and Innovation, with The MIT Press was released on August 10, 2021. The book explores STEAM learning that engages students from underrepresented ethnic communities in culturally relevant and inclusive maker education.

Eleven portraits of ‘featured futurists’ such as Octavia Butler were installed as part of the FUTURES exhibition at the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building in Washington D.C., which will close in July 2022. The portraits were generated using deep learning algorithms (ex. Deep Dream) and are featured on the exhibition website. The press release can be found here.

My A.I. artwork was on display as part of the 2020 MuseWeb conference and sponsored by The Peale Center for Baltimore History and Architecture. The location of the show is the MuseWeb/Peale virtual auditorium in Second Life, a virtual 3D environment. Writer/analyst Wagner Au covered the show at New World Notes.

In 2019, my algorithmic (generative) art will be part of Tower Hill Botanic Garden’s Horticultural Heroes exhibition. My rendition of Wangari Muta Matthai was produced through a collaboration with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, using algorithmically-generated imagery.

In 2018 I was in two group exhibitions: the LeoniArt Project in Genoa, Italy and, Probability & Uncertainty at Union College's Mandeville Gallery in Schenectady, NY. "Afrofuturism Amplified in Three Dimensions" included a lecture and maker workshop. In the Union show, I was one of six women artists working with scientific themes.

In 2017 I was in the group exhibition, We Have Always Lived in the Future at Flux Factory in Long Island City, NY. This show was mentioned in Art in America, specifically how the work "presents opportunities for rousing transcendence."

My digital installation, AR Virtual Sounding Space, used physical computing and projection mapping and it was the 2015 feature of Paseo Pop Up, a festival produced by Paseo Projects in Taos, New Mexico. It was a digital projection on the Luna Chapel at the Couse-Sharp Historic Site. The immersive projected piece was inspired by cosmograms, culturally based maps of space and time like the medicine wheel. I performed Electrofunk Mixtape: Illuminus Edition with Hank Shocklee in Boston, MA as part of the Illuminus outdoor festival.