Cultural Research in the Age of Machine Intelligence
On View
Introduction
What Cheer House is a San Francisco–rooted cultural studio working across archival research, artistic practice, and computational inquiry.
The public program is underway. New works in archive, research, and art will continue to appear.
Selected Works
The following works inaugurate the public program.
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Arthur Page Brown — “Architecture of California” (1894)
Arthur Page Brown and H. S. Crocker & Co., California State Building, World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, Ill., 1893. Courtesy of California State Library. In December 1894, a decade before the skyline of San Francisco would be forever altered, the prominent architect Arthur Page Brown took to the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle to issue a blistering critique of his adopted city. Brown, the visionary behind the Ferry Building, surveyed a metropolis he viewed as a haphazard collection of "uninteresting" wooden structures and "architectural abominations." He argued passionately for a new civic imagination: one defined by masonry construction, a coherent urban plan inspired by European capitals, and the preservation of the city's natural waterfront. To Brown, the city’s reliance on redwood and pine was not just an aesthetic failure, but a barrier to becoming a world-class seaport.
The most haunting aspect of Brown's essay, however, lies in his radical prescription for progress. Viewing the city’s dense thicket of timber as an obstacle to "universal good," he famously suggested that only "a sweeping fire, accompanied by earthquake" could clear the path for a city that would rise, Phoenix-like, from its own ashes. Published here on the anniversary of the April 18, 1906 disaster, this exhibit explores Brown’s eerie prophecy and the architectural ambitions that would eventually guide the rebuilding of San Francisco. It serves as a window into the pre-1906 mind, where the destruction of the old world was seen as the only prerequisite for the birth of the new.
"A sweeping fire, accompanied by earthquake, would accomplish great good... Phœnix-like there would, perhaps, arise a city that would eclipse any American seaport."
— Arthur Page Brown, Architecture of California, San Francisco Chronicle, 1894. -
Muybridge, Sallie Gardner, and the Making of Motion Legible
“Sallie Gardner,” owned by Leland Stanford; running at a 1.40 gait over the Palo Alto track, 19th June, 1878. Diagram of Foot Movements. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. On a Saturday in June 1878, at Leland Stanford’s stock farm in Menlo Park, Eadweard Muybridge achieved what was then considered a technical impossibility: he made rapid motion legible. By arranging twelve cameras along a track, each triggered by a horse’s movement, Muybridge captured the racing mare Sallie Gardner at a full gallop. This exhibit reconstructs that breakthrough through two rare primary sources—a visual "cabinet card" produced for commercial sale and a technical account from the Pacific Rural Press published just six days after the experiment. Together, they document the precise moment when the camera’s shutter replaced the fallible human eye, rendering the mechanics of a horse's stride available for scientific analysis for the very first time.
The significance of the Palo Alto track lies not just in the famous images of "unsupported transit," but in the birth of automated machine vision. The reporter’s account describes a system—composed of electrical triggers, batteries, and powdered lime—where the photographer moved from a direct operator to a designer of conditions. The horse, rushing down the track "like a whirlwind," became the agent that completed the circuit and captured its own image. This displacement of the human hand marks an early, vivid instance of algorithmic logic applied to art and science, transforming a series of photographs into a predictive tool that would eventually redefine everything from animal husbandry to the foundational grammar of cinema.
"The sound of the slides closing was like a continuous roll... taking a series of 12 pictures in less than half a second while the horse was traveling 40 feet per second."
About What Cheer House
What Cheer House takes its name from San Francisco’s original What Cheer House, a Gold Rush–era institution associated with public inquiry, exchange, and curiosity. That legacy is carried forward through archival investigation, computational methods, and exhibition design. Historical documents, maps, datasets, photographs, and other visual artifacts become the basis for research, publications, and original works that bring cultural history into contemporary view. Founded by artist Nina Fabunmi and cultural technologist Matt Savage, What Cheer House brings artistic practice and computational research into sustained dialogue.