Sahar Sajadieh is a computational performance artivist (artist + activist) and theorist. She is a UC Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC San Diego Department of Visual Arts with a Ph.D. in Media Arts and Technology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Sahar graduated with a dual BSc–BA degree in Computer Science and Theater from the University of British Columbia and received her Master’s Degree from the Performance Studies program at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts. She was previously an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Postdoctoral Fellow at Vanderbilt University.
Sahar’s research lies at the intersection of computational arts, artificial intelligence, social justice-oriented design, and performance/media theory. She is interested in the creative and critical applications of natural language processing, machine learning, extended reality, and robotics as means of storytelling, poetic expression, and social intervention. For Sahar, art practice is a form of activism, a way to challenge the public’s comfort zone and provoke dialogues about difficult, unspoken issues in society. Her research focuses on making interactive technologies and artificial intelligence more alive and their societal applications more ethical.
To see her work please visit this website: http://www.saharsajadieh.com/
While at OpenDocLab, Sahar is working on Becoming Schizophrenic*: Affective Storytelling with Generative AI.