Issue 20
Technologies
Worldcat ↗
Contributors
Gerry Beegan
Wendy Bellion
Colin Channer
ChatGPT-4
Wai Yee Chiong
Paula Gaetano Adi
Erik Gould
Jan Howard
Sarah Mirseyedi
Jolie Ngo
Polly Spenner
Elizabeth A. Williams
Issue 20—Technologies
By advocating for the integration of AI in art-making, we are not merely keeping up with technological trends—we are continuing a centuries-old tradition of innovation in art. This is a journey of collaboration between human emotion and computational power, one that promises to redefine our understanding of what art can be in this digital age.
—ChatGPT-4, introduction
Manual 20 (Technologies) considers the history and future of art and technology by examining artworks that combine manual techniques and handiwork with non-human productive agents associated with industry or technology. Manual 20 complements the exhibition Process Work: Intersections of Photography and Print ca. 1825 to Today, on view at the RISD Museum February 1–July 20, 2025. Sarah Mirseyedi, the curator of that exhibition, is this issue’s guest editor.
From the Files
Elizabeth A. Williams calculates how Gorham replicated the Parthenon Frieze
Double Takes
Wendy Bellion and Erik Gould study a physiognotrace profile portrait of C. A. Rodney
Jan Howard and Colin Channer gaze on a Phoebe Boswell drawing and remind us that What You’ve Got to Remember Is What You’re Looking at Is Also You (after Baldwin)
Artists on Art
Jolie Ngo on Flatpack Vessel in Space Blanket: .Gcode is my love language
Portfolio
An assortment of tools, gadgets, and technologies
Object Lessons
Gerry Beegan processes reproduction in Christiane Baumgartner’s Trails I and II
Sarah Mirseyedi considers a strip of lace, Henry Fox Talbot, and the mechanization of labor in Victorian Britain
How To
Wai Yee Chiong activates a shikake-e (trick picture)
Polly Spenner falls in love with an industrial loom
Paula Gaetano Adi emancipates a robot
RISD Museum director: Tsugumi Maki
Guest Editor: Sarah Mirseyedi
Editor: Amy Pickworth
Assistant editor: Dana Schneider
Art director: Derek Schusterbauer
Graphic designers: James Burgat (RISD BFA 2026, Graphic Design);
Lucy Pham (RISD MFA 2026, Graphic Design);
Elliott Romano (RISD MFA 2025, Graphic Design)
Digital designer: Brendan Campbell
Rights manager: Sionan Guenther
Photographer: Erik Gould (unless otherwise noted)
Printer: GHP
Process Work is made possible by the Mellon Foundation, with program support from the IFPDA Foundation. RISD Museum is supported by a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, through an appropriation by the Rhode Island General Assembly and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and with the generous partnership of the Rhode Island School of Design, its Board of Trustees, and Museum Governors.
Cover image:
Junichi Arai
1932–2017; b. in Kiryu, Japan;
worked in Japan
Nuno Me Gara (Fabric-Patterned Fabric) (detail), ca. 1980
Cotton and wool jacquard double cloth; mechanical high-twist yarns
Length: 297.2 cm (117 in.)
Gift of the artist 1988.040.1
