Independently, Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg have each left an enviable mark on the universe of interdisciplinary creativity.
In her visual art, Shlain—a filmmaker, best-selling author, and creator of the Webby Award (which, incidentally, is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year)—is best known for challenging conceptions of patriarchy, colonialism, and the passage of time. In his, Goldberg—professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley, co-founder of Ambirobotics and the Moxie Institute—is best known for visualizing ideas through telerobotics, automation, and AI.
The Artists with Abstract Expression(Stefanie Atkinson Schwartz)
It’s not that the two are strangers to working together. Life partners for three decades, they’ve co-written episodes for the Emmy-nominated series The Future Starts Here and the award-winning Sundance film, The Tribe. They’ve parented two children.
But it was the influence of something even more enduring than family that brought Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg to their most comprehensive collaboration to date: trees.
“We were both working on them,” says Shlain—she on Dendrofemenology, a series reimagining tree ring dating through a feminist lens, Goldberg on a census that analyzed foliage density to illustrate neighborhood inequities in Los Angeles. Combining forces spawned a whole new kind of offspring.
They called it Ancient Wisdom for a Future Ecology: Trees, Time, and Technology.
At birth, their progeny was six works intertwining natural and digital worlds through time, presented at the Skirball Cultural Center in L.A. in 2024 as part of the Getty PST Art: Art & Science Collide initiative. A little over a year later, it’s quadrupled in size. On Thursday, all 24 pieces—works Shlain describes as “physical manifestations of conversations we’ve had for 30 years about art, humanity, feminism, philosophy”—go on display at the di Rosa SF.
DendroJudaeology: A Timeline of the Jewish People. Reclaimed wood. 3 in x 62 in(Stefanie Atkinson Schwartz)
Ancient Wisdom for a Future Ecology: Trees, Time, and Technology “is almost about looking at the world through trees, letting trees be the lens to see things in a new way,” Shlain explains from the buzzing, still-blank galleries at the Minnesota Street Project last week.
The largest of those lenses is the Tree of Knowledge, a 10,000-pound slice of salvaged eucalyptus on which etchings of humanity’s biggest questions spiral outward from those facing the earliest Homo sapiens to today’s technologically-induced concerns. The elephantine cross-section will dominate the Atrium at the Minnesota Street Project, while its lighter-weight twin appears side-by-side with other works examining the “history of history,” the way humans have archived knowledge for future generations (If We Lose Ourselves); key moments in California’s environmental and cultural history (Living on the Edge); the history of Jewish tradition (DendroJudaeology: A Timeline of the Jewish People); and more.
Unlike the worst couples you know, conspiring together on Ancient Wisdom hasn’t meant giving up their individual identities to create them. In the exhibition, pieces selected from Shlain and Goldberg’s independent careers stand in conversation with the collaborative ones, including the former’s Gravitas, the realization of an idea she’s long wanted to execute.
“It’s a huge swing set that doesn’t look like a swing set,” with three suspended tree ring sections on which visitors can hitch a ride. “Swings are pendulums, which are also about gravity or time.” Their arcing movement, she explains, is a metaphor for traveling from past to present to future.
Ken Goldberg, Telegarden. Photograph printed on Dibond. 36 in x 58 in(Robert Wedemeyer)
ReBloom, Shlain’s favorite of Goldberg’s independent works, is a generative video earthwork that translates seismic activity from the Hayward Fault into rings of color sampled from the landscape paintings of Bay Area artists. It’s one of several new pieces in the show inspired by Northern California. Curator Twyla Ruby selected a handful of others from di Rosa’s massive collection of California art to provide additional, place-based artistic perspectives on the theme of time’s passage.
Several events planned around Ancient Wisdom for a Future Ecology: Trees, Time, and Technology will take visitors deeper, including a Jewish-themed tour and talk on Tu BiShvat, the celebration of nature and trees, on February 1st at 1pm, and a feminist-leaning one on March 7th at 2pm. On March 12th, Goldberg will be in conversation with Whitney Museum curator Christiane Paul.
But at the center of it all will be the trees, always the trees.
“Knowing that the redwoods have been around for thousands of years before we were around and will be in the future—is very grounding,” says Shlain. “Going into nature puts things into a longer time scale.”
// ‘Ancient Wisdom for a Future Ecology: Trees, Time, and Technology’ is on exhibit from January 22nd through April 11th at the di Rosa SF, 1150 25th St. (Dogpatch); find more info and tickets for events at dirosaart.org
