SAHAL HASSAN




Technologist, designer, and artist based in NYC. I make still and moving images, sounds, and artistic tools and objects that illuminate the links between memory, sight, relationships, power, and history. I’m interested in helping people think about topics like digitally-mediated attachment, surveillance, and the exercise of power through sound and image.


sahalhassansharif@gmail.com


Exhibitions, Screenings, Projects, Grants, &c.
Education
B.A. English, Columbia University, 2019

M.P.S. Interactive Telecommunications, NYU, 2025



Grants & Projects Small Batch Dataset Farmers Market, Rhizome World, New York, NY
April 2025

Rhizome Creative Web Microgrant
February 2025

LARPA Small Batch Dataset Farmers Market, New York, NY
December 2024

Warman School Hour, Montez Press Radio, New York, NY
October 2022



Exhibitions & Screeningsintimate (en)closures, 538 Johnson, New York, NY
May 2025

White Columns Online: GMT (Curator)
November 2021–February 2022

Black Lives on Screen, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA
April 2021

FREE SPACE, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH
October–November 2020

New Orleans Film Festival, New Orleans, LA
October 2019

Spectacle Theater, Brooklyn, NY
July 2019

Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH
May 2019

Last Updated 05.11.25
SOME WORK




now you’re in my pocket2025 now you’re in my pocket is a collection of portable web-art objects—small, hand-held devices each embedded with a unique offline browser-based artwork. These objects create their own WiFi networks; when you connect, a captive portal appears, but rather than a login screen, it displays the embedded artwork.

Each piece is powered by a Raspberry Pi Zero and a battery salvaged from a discarded vape. These artworks live entirely offline, only accessible by being physically near the object. You can’t screenshot or share a link; you can only share the object.

This project reimagines the the way we share net art: not through scalable, cloud-based distribution, but through embodied, ephemeral exchanges. It rethinks the metaphors we use for networks—away from scale and speed, toward slowness, friction, and relation.




Infer: AI Accountability Tools for Artists2025
 Infer is an application that helps artists determine whether their artworks have been used in the training of generative AI models. Built on the technique of membership inference attacks, Infer analyzes user-submitted images to assess their likelihood of inclusion in a model’s training data.

While this technique has existed in academic research, Infer brings it into public reach for the first time, offering artists a tangible way to address the invisible labor extracted for use in AI systems.

The tool implements the architecture described in Membership Inference of Diffusion Models (arXiv:2301.09956), adapted into a usable web interface powered by Flask and Hugging Face APIs. It also maintains a growing, opt-in database of affected artists, alongside legal resources for recourse and collective action.




Index of Casual Typology
with Maria Arenas and Yuan Zichen
2024–presentThe Index of Casual Typology collects collections.

Risograph print series and online platform. Presented at LARPA Small Batch Dataset Farmers Market in 2024 and at Rhizome World in 2025.

casual-typology.org


Bent2023
Bent is a musical performance tool that uses a software-defined radio receiving police scanner audio to allow users to manipulate the signal output with pitch bend, bit crush, and delay effects.

It uses an Arduino as a MIDI and SDR controller and a Raspberry Pi running Pure Data for digital signal processing.




Landmark2019
Landmark is a short documentary about the Wall Street slave market, located near Wall and Pearl street in the modern day financial district of Manhattan. It’s an exploration of space and memory, as well as of what we choose to remember and what we choose to forget.

The work and Q&A are written up in Hyperallergic from a screening at the Spectacle Theatre in Brooklyn.

© Sahal 2025