Disruptive Cultures: Affect and Effects of Social Media Curated by David Familian

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Exhibition on view from April 4–June 27, 2026, at the Beall Center for Art + Technology

IRVINE, Calif., April 1, 2026 — The Beall Center for Art + Technology at the University of California, Irvine, is pleased to announce the opening of Disruptive Cultures: Affect and Effects of Social Media, curated by David Familian, artistic director of the Beall. The exhibition opens on Saturday, April 4, 2026, from 2 to 5 p.m., and will run through Saturday, June 27, 2026. A symposium on artificial intelligence will take place on Sat., April 4, 2026, from 10 a.m. to noon. 

In his writings from the 1960s, Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan famously coined the phrase “global village” to describe how electronic media –– specifically television — would shrink our planet into a place where people could be interconnected and instantly share information. While seemingly optimistic, McLuhan also prophesied that the rapid speed of electronic information would cause a cultural crisis in which divisiveness and nationalism would prevail, and our response to that crisis would further divide us.

Since the advent of the smartphone in 2007 and the deluge of apps that have followed, new technologies have both facilitated and complicated our lives. These developments, exponentially more impactful than any previous electronic media, have now reached an inflection point. 

The artists in Disruptive Cultures: Affect and Effects of Social Media use sculpture and installation, audio and video, and software and interactive media to reveal how the dominant platforms of social media and now ubiquitous AI are altering our lives.  

In his video and sound work, Ben Grosser represents Mark Zuckerberg’s obsession with attaining MORE! MORE! MORE! eyeballs in the burgeoning attention economy. Maya Man scrutinizes the promotion of confidence, self-care, and wellness in aesthetics aimed at appealing to teenagers. In her sculptural installation of myriad screens, garish colors, and cacophonous sounds, Casey Kauffmann expresses the affect of our constant, everyday oversaturation of media. Sara Rothberg wrote a custom software program prompting two AI agents embodied as ghostly avatars to engage in infinite, non-repeating conversations. Jennifer Gradecki and Derek Curry simulate a booth at a tech convention, using large language models to invite the viewer to generate their own propaganda and conspiracy theories. For their Beall Black Box Projects residency, Lauren Lee McCarthy and Kyle McDonald created a private, soundproof booth with software that allows participants to experience how AI listens and intervenes in social experience in real time.  

Whether their work addresses information inundation, enticing us to spend more time and money online, promulgating division and propaganda, or infiltrating our everyday work, social life, and relationships, the artists in Disruptive Cultures are astute observers and provide cautionary tales of both the “affect” and “effects” of social media and AI. 

“To me, complex systems represent a major paradigm shift that art needs to address, because they are having one of the greatest impacts on our lives in the 21st century,” said Familian. “Social media platforms and AI are not just technologies — they are complex systems shaped by algorithms, user behavior, data flows, and economic incentives. Everything we are trying to fix in society is part of a complex system, and if you don’t recognize that, the solutions tend to be too simplistic and can even make the problem worse. The artists in this exhibition engage those systems from different angles.”

“As we mark the Beall Center’s 25th anniversary, we’re highlighting a throughline that has defined our program from the beginning: artists using technology to illuminate the cultural stakes of the present,” said Jesse Colin Jackson, executive director of the Beall Center. “Disruptive Cultures: Affect and Effects of Social Media asks what it means to live inside platforms engineered for engagement and brings together artists who critique that power, redirect it, and in some cases build new forms of engagement.”

The exhibition continues the Beall Center’s longstanding commitment to presenting artists who critically engage emerging technologies and their broader cultural implications. As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in communication, creativity, and everyday life, Disruptive Cultures invites audiences to consider how these systems shape public discourse, personal expression, and collective experience. The exhibition opening will be accompanied by a symposium featuring participating artists, and discussants from diverse fields, including engineering and the philosophy of science.   

About the Claire Trevor School of the Arts: The UC Irvine Claire Trevor School of the Arts is where scholarly research and creative activity converge. As the only comprehensive arts school in the University of California system, it includes four departments: art, dance, drama and music. The school offers 15 undergraduate and graduate degree programs and two minors that combine rigorous artistic training with a world-class liberal arts education. Named for Academy Award-winning actress Claire Trevor, the school presents more than 200 public performances, exhibitions and lectures each year. Students and faculty engage in studio practice, performance, academic study and interdisciplinary research, often collaborating across campus and within the community. Recognized nationally for its excellence, access and affordability, the school prepares the next generation of creative leaders who shape culture, drive innovation and make a difference in the world. For more information, visit www.arts.uci.edu.

About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities and is ranked among the nation’s top 10 public universities by U.S. News & World Report. The campus has produced five Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 36,000 students and offers 224 degree programs. It’s located in one of the world’s safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County’s second-largest employer, contributing $7 billion annually to the local economy and $8 billion statewide. For more on UCI, visit www.uci.edu.

Media access: Radio programs/stations may, for a fee, use an on-campus ISDN line to interview UCI faculty and experts, subject to availability and university approval. For more UCI news, visit news.uci.edu. Additional resources for journalists may be found at communications.uci.edu/for-journalists.

Disruptive Cultures: Affect and Effects of Social Media is part of a series of special events celebrating the Beall Center’s 25th Anniversary. The symposium will take place on Saturday, April 4, from 10 a.m. to noon, followed by the opening reception from 2 to 5 p.m. The Beall Center offers free admission and is open to the public during the academic year from Tuesday to Saturday, noon–6 pm.

Disruptive Cultures: Affect and Effects of Social Media is supported by The Beall Family Foundation, the Claire Trevor School of the Arts, and UCI Office of Research.

Artists

Jennifer Gradecki & Derek Curry, Ben Grosser, Casey Kauffmann, Maya Man, Lauren Lee McCarthy & Kyle McDonald and Sarah Rothberg.

About the Curator

David Familian began working at the Beall Center for Art + Technology in 2005 and was appointed as associate director in April 2006. An artist and educator, he received his B.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts in 1979 and his M.F.A. from UCLA in 1986. For the past 20 years, he taught studio art and critical theory in art schools and universities, including Otis College of Art and Design, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Santa Clara University, San Francisco Art Institute and U.C. Irvine. Although Familian began his career as a photographer, since 1990, new media has become integral to his own artistic practice and his work as a web producer and technical advisor for individual artists, museums and universities such as Walker Art Center, University of Minnesota and the Orange County Museum of Art. He has curated and organized the majority of exhibitions at the Beall Center. In 2013, he premiered Echo and Narcissus, a new sound video installation with interactive elements at the Art/Sci Gallery at UCLA. Familian developed the Black Box Projects at the Beall Center and meets regularly with artists, as well as technologists and scientists, to collaborate on new projects.

About the Beall Center for Art + Technology: The Beall Center is an exhibition and research center located at the University of California, Irvine, in the Claire Trevor School of the Arts. Since its opening in 2000, the Beall Center has promoted new forms of creation and expression by building innovative scholarly relationships and community collaborations among artists, scientists, and technologists and by encouraging research and development of art forms that can affect the future. For artists, the Beall Center serves as a proving ground—a place between the artist’s studio and the art museum—and allows them to work with new technologies in their early stages of development. For visitors, the Beall Center serves as a window to the most imaginative and creative visual arts innovations. The curatorial focus is a diverse range of innovative, world-renowned artists, both national and international, who work with experimental and interactive media. The Beall Center received its initial support from the Rockwell Corp. in honor of retired chairman Don Beall and his wife, Joan—the core idea being to merge their lifelong passions of business, engineering, and the arts in one place. Today, major support is generously provided by the Beall Family Foundation. For more information, visit beallcenter.uci.edu.

About the Claire Trevor School of the Arts: The UC Irvine Claire Trevor School of the Arts is where scholarly research and creative activity converge. As the only comprehensive arts school in the University of California system, it includes four departments: art, dance, drama and music. The school offers 15 undergraduate and graduate degree programs and two minors that combine rigorous artistic training with a world-class liberal arts education. Named for Academy Award-winning actress Claire Trevor, the school presents more than 200 public performances, exhibitions and lectures each year. Students and faculty engage in studio practice, performance, academic study and interdisciplinary research, often collaborating across campus and within the community. Recognized nationally for its excellence, access and affordability, the school prepares the next generation of creative leaders who shape culture, drive innovation and make a difference in the world. For more information, visit arts.uci.edu.

About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities and is ranked among the nation’s top 10 public universities by U.S. News & World Report. The campus has produced five Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 36,000 students and offers 224 degree programs. It’s located in one of the world’s safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County’s second-largest employer, contributing $7 billion annually to the local economy and $8 billion statewide. For more on UCI, visit uci.edu.

Media access: Radio programs/stations may, for a fee, use an on-campus ISDN line to interview UCI faculty and experts, subject to availability and university approval. For more UCI news, visit news.uci.edu.