Sahar Sajadieh

ISEA Bio(s) Available:

• ISEA2024

  Sahar Sajadieh is a computational media/performance artivist, theorist, and poet. She is currently a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC San Diego Department of Visual Arts and an Open Documentary Lab Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Sahar obtained her Ph.D. in Media Arts and Technology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her academic background is in Computer Science (BSc) and Theater (BA) from the University of British Columbia, followed by a master’s degree in Performance Studies from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts.

  For Sahar, art practice is a form of activism, a way to challenge the public’s comfort zone and provoke dialogue about difficult, unspoken issues facing our communities. Through digital performance practice, computational art-making, and interactive storytelling, her work playfully examines the underlying problematic constructs of societal interactions and the exploitative systems of power within our technoculture. She is interested in the applications of emerging media, robotic agents, and artificially intelligent systems as means for creative practice and critical investigation. With an objective to reclaim these oppressive technologies that have been predominantly funded by the military or tech giants, she repurposes them as mediums for poetic expression, public intervention, and social empowerment.

  ISEA2022

  Sahar Sajadieh is a digital media/performance artivist (artist + activist) and theorist, and computer scientist. She obtained her Ph.D. in Media Arts and Technology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She graduated with a dual BSc–BA degree in Computer Science and Theater from UBC and received her Master’s Degree from the Performance Studies program at NYU. Sahar’s practice-led research lies at the intersection of computational performance, artificial intelligence, social justice-oriented design, and performance/media theory. She is interested in the application of natural language processing, machine learning, and extended reality as means of storytelling, poetic expression, and social intervention. For Sahar, computational performance practice is a form of activism, a way to challenge the public’s comfort zone and provoke dialogues about unspoken issues in society. Her research focuses on making interactive artificially intelligent technologies more alive and human to us, and their application more ethical and humane in society.