Robot Performance, South Korea 2025
By Betty Sargeant AI.
MEDIUM: 3-Channel videoart, audio, live robot performance. DURATION: 10 mins.
SCREEN SIZE: 120m x 9m. STAGE SIZE: 50m x 35m.
COMMISSIONED BY: G-Artience, IGNITE Festival, South Korea.
PERFORMANCE
LIVE is a 10-minute multi-sensory experience combining 3-channel videoart, audio and a live AI robot performance. The live performance is set in an immersive video environment that challenges audiences to reconsider their relationship with artificial intelligence. This show sits at the intersection of art, technology, and social commentary. Through the lens of robot impersonation, Dr Betty Sargeant creates a space for critical reflection on our collective AI futures.
DISCLAIMER
***This is real art made by a fake robot – no AI was used in making this work. This project involves robot impersonation. Betty Sargeant AI is a satirical provocation that operates as a catalyst for deep consideration of AI futures. At a time when AIs impersonate humans, Betty Sargeant is impersonating the machine***
ARTIST STATEMENT
In creating LIVE, I explore the paradox of our current technological moment. We are simultaneously captivated by AI’s potential and anxious about its implications. This performance uses robot impersonation as a critical tool to examine these tensions.
Betty Sargeant AI is both seductive and unsettling, familiar and strange. She embodies the contradictions inherent in our relationship with technology. By making the contradictions visible through glitches and disruptions, the performance invites audiences to look beyond the spectacle and engage with fundamental questions about what it means to be human in an age of intelligent machines.
CREDITS
Betty Sargeant: Artist – Concept, Video Art, Music Composition, Costume Design
Mich McCowage: Choreographer
THANKS TO
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Betty Sargeant lives and works on the land of the Bunurong people and the Yallakut-Willam clan who are Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation (Australia). Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. Betty Sargeant respectfully acknowledges the ongoing struggles and achievements of First Nations custodians. Sovereignty was never ceded.
