Catherine Griffiths
Assistant Professor, Columbia University
Catherine Griffiths is a designer and researcher exploring the politics of machine learning in society. She is an Assistant Professor in Computational Design Practices at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). She views algorithms as contemporary sites of struggle, studying their impact on labor operating across different scales, including cities, workplaces, and within the home. She investigates a post-AI human rights landscape that redefines labor relations, gender politics, algorithmic governance, and the rights to the city.
Toward a Counter-Algorithmic Design Practice
In this lecture, Catherine Griffiths advocates for a counter-algorithmic design practice—one that contests the black-boxed nature of artificial intelligence by revealing the constituencies of models and what is left excluded or unmodeled. She will present elements of her research into the role of autonomous decision-making systems across industrial labor, domestic spaces, and the rights of climate activists in public spaces. Her presentation will share a series of design tactics that she employs to realign human intelligence with computational processes.
Her creative research practice intersects critical AI studies, social documentary, and algorithmic visualization, making palpable the invisible computational forces that shape power and structure social systems. She creates simulations, short films, video installations, and critical software pieces to reveal and contest the normative logics of machine learning algorithms and think through new counter-algorithmic imaginaries.
Assistant Professor, Columbia University. Catherine Griffiths.
Her work has been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, at Geidei University in Tokyo, and the National Etruscan Museum in Rome. Recent publications include book chapters in Design and Science and Engaging the Margins: Experimental Practices in Interdisciplinary Art, as well as articles in Prospectives Journal and Gradient Journal. In 2024, she was the recipient of a BRAID Responsible AI research grant from UK Research and Innovation and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, in collaboration with the University of Bournemouth, UK. She received her Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Media Arts + Practice from the University of Southern California. She holds an M.Arch from The Bartlett, University College London, and a B.A. from Camberwell College, University of the Arts London. Prior to joining GSAPP, she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan.
Published February 26, 2025
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