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COMING UP

Oakland Tech Week
(Nov 16 - Nov 22)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Popular Event 
With Cliff Kuang (Designer, Google), Maryam Gharavi (Prompt Enggr, Zapier).
SVA Grad Center, 136 W 21st St
Nov 20 (Thu) , 2025 @ 06:30 PM
FREE
 
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DETAILS

Join us for the first in a series of public talks as part of our Google AMI grant "The Design Lens: Critical Writings on Machine Learning"
As part of its Applied Media Workshop on machine learning, D-Crit hosts a conversation about how artificial intelligence is reshaping both the tools of writing & the conditions of reading. Writers today face a shifting landscape: people no longer approach text as something fixed or authoritative, but as something responsive-tailored to individual queries, habits, & desires. How can this new, personalized media ecosystem be engineered in a way that still honors the truth of the archive? What opportunities & risks emerge as AI systems learn to speak in tones designed to earn our trust?

Featuring Cliff Kuang & Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, two thinkers who bring backgrounds in critical & journalistic writing to their work in the tech industry, the panel will examine how voice, design, & interaction shape our relationship to language in an age of intelligent systems. The panel is moderated by Brian Droitcour, co-instructor of the Applied Media Workshop at D-Crit in collaboration with Eric Schwartau.

Thursday, November 20, 6:30 p.m. SVA Graduate Center Theater - Reception to follow.



Presented by MA Design Research, Writing & Criticism (D-Crit) at the School of Visual Arts, a graduate program that explores the contexts & consequences of design. Supported by Google's Artists + Machine Intelligence (AMI) program.

In collaboration with SVA MFA Interaction Design & SVA MFA Design for Social Innovation.

Speakers:



Cliff Kuang is a Senior Staff Designer at Google, where he works on AI innovation, & is in the company's top 1% by patents held. He is also the author of User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work, & Play, which the New York Times called "a tour de force, an engrossing fusion of scholarly research, professional experience & revelations from intrepid firsthand reporting.

Maryam Monalisa Gharavi is a poet, artist, translator, & prompt engineer at Zapier, a company that builds & scales AI workflows. She is the author of BIO (Inventory Press, 2018) & founder of Oil Research Group (ORG), a one-woman collective exploring oil, data, & extractive economies.

Brian Droitcour is a critic & director of Outland, a nonprofit supporting initiatives in publishing & education about art, culture, & technology.
 
 
 
 
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