On view through May 2026 in ATA’s Galleries: short films of legendary video artist Copper Giloth
Copper Giloth, Modeling the Female Body
Also on view:
Ballyoid Cardioids (1979)
Skippy Peanut Butter Jars (1980)
AS I SAID (1980)
Childhood Logic (1980)
Alphabet Song of A Young Girl (1986)
The Red Table (1986)
Modeling the Female Body: A Survey of Computer Generated Women, 1980-1993 (1994)
Gallery hours: 2-5pm on Sundays in May
or, request an appointment to view: alex@atasite.org
Copper Giloth‘s Feminist Computer Art explores a formative decade in the work of artist Copper Giloth, tracing her pioneering contributions to early computer art. After encountering computers while working as a welder in Massachusetts, Giloth pursued graduate study at the University of Illinois Chicago’s groundbreaking Electronic Visualization Lab, becoming part of the first generation of Chicago new media artists. During this period, she also embraced feminist liberation politics, which became central to her emerging artistic approach.
Focusing on the late 1970s through the 1980s, the exhibition highlights Giloth’s experimental integration of video and computer graphics, emphasizing her innovative use of programming as a creative medium. Her works investigate the expressive potential of code, foregrounding elements such as the glitch, repetition, and the generative possibilities of early programming. Through these strategies, Giloth transforms digital systems into sites of visual and conceptual exploration.
Crucially, Giloth’s engagement with emerging technologies constitutes a feminist practice. Working within a field historically dominated by men, she asserts authorship over computational tools while challenging assumptions about gender and technical expertise. Her use of code as an open, generative system resists fixed hierarchies and embraces multiplicity, aligning with feminist commitments to collaboration, process, and the destabilization of authority.
By revisiting this pivotal era, Copper Giloth‘s Feminist Computer Art underscores Giloth’s influential role in shaping the language of early computer art and affirms the lasting impact of feminist perspectives within technological practice.
–Helena Shaskevich,
Artists' Television Access
Weekly Newsletter
Coming Up This Month
Saturday, June 27, 2026, 8:00 pm, classic-editor
Possibly Puppets
Window Installations
Tuesday, June 30, 2026, 4:09 pm, classic-editor
Quinn Keck: Irrational Symbolic Thinking
Irrational Symbolic Thinking
On Display in June
An irrational number is a never ending, never repeating decimal. An imaginary number exists1 and creates a complex system that explains observed phenomena.1, 2 Equations are symbolic representations of concepts, abiding metaphors,2 ideas, dreams,3 and thoughts.
It can be tempting to imagine our skulls to be like the walls of the gallery – blank canvases to house our autonomous creations. Like the gallery wall and Plato’s cave, our minds and bodies4 have contexts that determine possible interpretations of shadows on the wall, obscuring which questions are “unreasonable” to ask.5
But let’s peel back a few layers? After all, knowledge is a collective pursuit.*
A detailed full proof here:
“Answers and Explanations — Do “Imaginary Numbers” Really Exist?” by Philip Spencer www.math.toronto.edu/mathnet/answers/imaginary.html.
And for some other helpful explanations:
https://www.reddit.com/r/askmath/comments/z4qxsk/can_anyone_explain_what_imaginary_number_are_what/
2 See Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s discussion of abiding metaphors and science in her book The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry and the Cosmic Dream Boogie.
3 Srinivasa Ramanujan is regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time and the“the man who knew infinity,” as the film with the same title tells. He figured out the equations in his notebooks through mysticism, his faith and dreams.
4 The mind/body split that may seem natural or common sense to people in the Western philosophical traditions is not so universal and has been pushed back upon by many. One place to start is Julian Frazier, PhD’s article “Indigenous Wisdom Reveals the Truth about the Mind-Body Connection”: https://medium.com/@julian.frazier.phd/indigenous-wisdom-reveals-the-truth-about-the-mind-body-connection-c8c5ec1b0451
5 For more on what questions are reasonable and unreasonable to ask, see the paper: Cognitive Sociology: between the personal and the universal mind by Eviatar Zerubavel, published by The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Sociology.
6 Nataille Wynn, ContaPoints, in her video essay “Conspiracy” makes this excellent point.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teqkK0RLNkI
More on her work: https://www.contrapoints.com/
Artist Bio
Quinn Keck (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist who investigates concepts in sociology, physics, technology and philosophy. Working across printmaking, artists books, creative coding, and installation, their work discusses memory, perception and grief through questioning the manifestation of systems. They have been an instructor and printmaker in residence at Women’s Studio Workshop, Kala Art Institute, and Zea Mays Printmaking and their work has been shown at Gray Area, Root Division, the Richmond Art Center, Highpoint Center for Printmaking, and Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair. Their process is one of constantly iterating on new and old images, just as we all are a series of imperfect versions of ourselves improving each iteration but never fully finished.
About Artists' Television Access
Artists' Television Access is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) artist-run
screening venue and gallery located in the heart of San Francisco's Mission
District. ATA is supported in part by Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel
Tax Fund, The Christensen Fund, individuals members, donors and volunteers.
CELEBRATING 25 YEARS OF EXPERIMENTAL MEDIA: Join ATA as a member and receive exciting gifts, including the 2008 DVD compilation, T-shirts, and free admission to screenings and more! Artists on the 2008 DVD compilation include: Yin-Ju Chen, Mike Rollo, Marthaxiv, Sam Manera, Wago Kreider, Federico Campanale, Paul Clipson and Carl Diehl. http://www.atasite.org/membership/
How to Reach Us:
Artists' Television Access
992 Valencia Street (at 21st)
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 824-3890
ata@atasite.org
Gallery is open before and after screenings for viewing.
Screenings start at 8pm unless otherwise noted.
Directions: Take Bart to 24th Street Mission. Walk 1 block east to Valencia and 3 blocks north. ATA is located between 21st and 20th Streets.