Nancy Baker Cahill, Slipstream (Proximities), 2022

2022 Art + Technology Lab Grant Recipients

The Art + Technology Lab at LACMA is pleased to announce its 2022 grant recipients! 

The grant awards include monetary and in-kind support for projects that engage emerging technologies. LACMA issued the 2022 Request for Proposals in December 2021, and the museum received over 600 submissions. Selection criteria include artistic merit, opportunities for public engagement, and the suggested forms of data, methods, and/or models that might be of interest to other artists.

2022 Art + Technology Lab Grant recipients:



Kelly Akashi, Body Complex, 2019, courtesy of the Artist, François Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles, and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, photo: Marten Elder

Kelly Akashi will employ new microscopic imaging technology such as X-Ray lasers and microCT scanning to record data that will be processed into sculptural forms. Trained in photography, Akashi will expand sculpture’s relationship to this technology and experiment with new methods for materializing the information she gathers by using hardware such as Desktop Metal 3D printers to achieve new, intricate metal sculptures. Akashi’s project is called Fissures.



Nancy Baker Cahill, Mushroom Cloud, 2022

Nancy Baker Cahill will examine the equitable distributive properties of mycelium networks, comparing them to current distributive technologies. Focusing on blockchains, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), and the idea of a Web3 internet, the artist will look for how these technologies could be adapted to strategies of mutual aid and reparation. Cahill’s project is called Substrate.



Lauren Lee McCarthy, I Heard Talking Is Dangerous, 2020, credit: Kat Kaye

Lauren Lee McCarthy will develop a performance that will unfold in participants' cars, with an AI voice assistant providing geolocative and narrative direction. Taking place in Los Angeles, the work will explore themes of navigated risk assessment, control, and shifting boundaries. McCarthy’s project is called Drive-Thru.



Daniel R. Small, California City suburban grid layout, Image: Steven Heuer, Copyright Techne

Daniel R. Small will create and direct an episodic documentary series based on diverse sets of research from a wide range of experts in fields such as philosophy, zoology, astrophysics, planetary science, robotics, and Artificial Intelligence, among other fields. The aim of the series is to locate these research groupings as being in direct conversation with the inquiries of contemporary artists and the ways that the term “artist” has become a catch-all for generating ideas in fields such as philosophy, archaeology, cultural anthropology, law, biology, technology, and various other disciplines. Through analyzing case studies involving the evolution of humans, the natural world, and the amplification of technologies, the series will form an epistemology of the present that models generative bodies of evidence. Small’s project is titled Techne.

Stay tuned for updates on the projects in the coming months and congratulations to the recipients!

The Art + Technology Lab is presented by

Hyundai logo

The Art + Technology Lab is made possible by Snap Inc.

Additional support is provided by SpaceX. 

The Lab is part of The Hyundai Project: Art + Technology at LACMA, a joint initiative exploring the convergence of art and technology. 

Seed funding for the development of the Art + Technology Lab was provided by the Los Angeles County Quality and Productivity Commission through the Productivity Investment Fund and LACMA Trustee David Bohnett.