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Alison Hiltner

We Have Merely Been Detected

Fiber optic threads, cast plastisol, vacuum formed plastic, EEG headset, laptop, metal fasteners, stands, projectors, cable system

“'We Have Merely Been Detected' interprets brain activity in real-time, creating connective moments of vulnerability and empathy through the inner mechanisms of our daily thoughts.

I view myself as an archeologist of science fiction, exploring its terrain in films, television, and video games, then intertwining these concepts with current scientific inquiry. My visual touchstones combine all those subjects to create ever-expanding worlds…By maintaining a sense of wonder, humor, and the absurd, each piece presents a vignette—a laboratory of the mind.”

— Alison Hiltner

About the artist

Alison Hiltner

Alison Hiltner is a visual artist and the associate director of Soo Visual Arts Center, living and working in Minneapolis. Her visual arts practice explores how science fiction cinema influences our current understanding of scientific research and how that filter of knowledge will affect technological advancement in the future. This examination takes the form of multimedia installation and interactive display. Hiltner has exhibited nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions; some of her recent credits include shows at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and Telemark Art Center in Norway in 2017, the Weisman Art Museum in 2019, and 16 Tech in Indianapolis in 2020.

She received numerous Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grants, three MRAC/McKnight Foundation Next Step Grants, the Jerome Foundation Fellowship in 2011/12, an Artists on the Verge Northern Lights/Jerome Foundation fellowship in 2013/14, a McKnight Fellowship in Visual Arts, and an artist in residence at the University of Minnesota’s School of Medicine through an experimental program at the Weisman Art Museum in 2018-20, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2021 and had a solo exhibition at UCLA Art | Sci Center in Los Angeles 2022. She recently received the 2024/25 McKnight Fellowship in Visual Arts with an upcoming solo exhibition at the University of Minnesota Morris this fall.

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