Press Release

In Showcase, Mozilla Foundation and Rhizome Affirm Imagination as Core Tech Infrastructure: “Tech Needs Artists.”

NEW YORK — May 14, 2026 — At a moment when artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping and flattening how knowledge, creativity, and culture are produced, Mozilla Foundation and Rhizome are making a different kind of intervention: treating imagination itself as critical infrastructure.

On May 16 at the New Museum, the organizations will preview Counterstructural Commons, eight works by artists and creative technologists who are engaging AI and contemporary technology as systems to question, resist, and reimagine. The preview takes place alongside Rhizome’s 7x7, the annual art/tech collaboration event, prior to their online launch on May 20, and can be accessed by purchasing a ticket to 7x7 at any level.

The day-long showcase alongside 7x7activation marks the culmination of a 10-week residency organized by Rhizome’s Bri Griffin in which participants developed new cultural artifacts, installations, and tools that challenge dominant technological paradigms—sending up early flares of how creative practice is evolving in response to the “AI economy.”

With growing support from institutions like Mozilla Foundation and programs like Rhizome’s 7x7, creative practices that cannot be neatly categorized as “art” or “technology” are flourishing. The eight residents of Counterstructural Commons — Michael Candy, Beck Haberstroh, Shakti Mb, Ari Melenciano, Ramsey Nasser, ZZYW(Zhenzhen Qi, Yang Wang), Steven Jos Phan, and Chris Woebken—represent this burgeoning form of practice that blends technical fluency with cultural and critical insight, and that is developing new approaches to AI from outside traditional industry structures.

"You are currently living inside the imaginations of about fourteen guys in Palo Alto," said Nabiha Syed, Executive Director of Mozilla Foundation. "We thought it might be worth asking artists what they see. Turns out their imaginations are bigger."

Counterstructural Commons is part of Mozilla Foundation’s broader Creative Futures initiative, supporting artists and creative technologists whose work shapes how society understands and governs emerging technologies. This work includes Artists Make Technology, a collaborative grantmaking program with the Doris Duke Foundation, and multiple programs that convene entertainment industry creatives, legal scholars, and union representatives to discuss creative rights and AI.

“Since 1996, Rhizome has been advocating for artists who engage deeply with technologies,” said Michael Connor, Executive Director of Rhizome. “Three decades after our founding, this cohort of creative technologists shows us how this continues to find new relevance, with eight remarkable prototypes that challenge our understanding of AI’s role in culture and communication today.”

Rather than optimizing existing systems, the works on view propose alternatives:

• Tools for collective, non-hierarchical knowledge sharing that challenge platform governance
• Ecological sensing systems which make environmental harms legible
• Interfaces that expose the hidden labor and invisible infrastructures behind AI
• Participatory systems that allow communities to engage directly with datasets and decision-making

Each project functions as both artwork and prototype—testing how technology might operate differently if designed around collective agency, plural knowledge systems, and public good.

"AI is already shaping what people see, make, and know. Counterstructural Commons puts artistic practice at the wheel," said Ziyaad Bhorat, Vice President of Imagination and Strategic Growth at Mozilla Foundation. "Everyone is optimizemaxxing. These eight people had the nerve to imagine instead.”

For media inquiries, please contact [email protected].

About Counterstructural Commons

Counterstructural Commons is a 10-week residency developed by Mozilla Foundation in partnership with Rhizome. Through workshops and collaborative development, eight residents produced new works that engage AI and contemporary technology as sites of cultural, social, and technical intervention. The program culminates in a public activation at the New Museum in New York City.

About Mozilla Foundation – Creative Futures

Creative Futures is Mozilla Foundation’s program supporting artists and technologists working at the intersection of culture and emerging technology. Through residencies, fellowships, and convenings, it invests in creative work as a form of shared infrastructure—shaping how technologies are understood, built, and governed.

About Rhizome

Rhizome champions born-digital art and culture through commissions, exhibitions, scholarship, and digital preservation. Founded in 1996 by artist Mark Tribe as an email discussion list including some of the first artists to work online, Rhizome has played an integral role in the history of contemporary art engaged with digital technologies and the internet. Since 2003, Rhizome has been an affiliate in residence at the New Museum in New York City.