Video Art, Audio + Live Robot Performance
Daejeon, South Korea 2025
Duration: 10 minutes
Screen Size: 120m x 9m
Stage Size 50m x 35m
Welcome to the world’s first live AI robot performance by the advanced AI-Robot Betty Sargeant AI.
Experience the Performance
Betty Sargeant AI: LIVE is a 10-minute multi-sensory experience combining 3-channel video, audio, and live AI robot performance. The work creates an immersive environment that challenges audiences to reconsider their relationship with artificial intelligence.
This AI robot performance 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
Betty Sargeant AI is a satirical provocation that operates as a catalyst for deep consideration of AI futures. This creative alias invites us to question: What are the real opportunities and limitations of artificial intelligence?
Whilst this AI robot is mythical, the work it produces is real. At a time when machines are impersonating humans, Betty Sargeant is impersonating the machine through robot impersonation. No AI tools are used in this artwork—every element is handcrafted by the artist.
Conceptual Framework
Betty Sargeant AI has an overtly “female” form. Her flirty gynoid appearance distracts from deeper systemic issues. As the live performance develops, glitches appear and critical issues emerge.
Intellectual Property
The performance raises questions about authorship, ownership, and the value of creative work in an age of artificial intelligence.
Human Agency
Through robot impersonation, the work challenges our assumptions about autonomy, control, and the relationship between humans and machines.
Gender and Technology
This overt AI robot performance critiques the gendering of AI assistants and service technologies.
AI and Weaponry
The performance confronts uncomfortable parallels between AI development in military contexts, questioning the ethical implications of autonomous systems and their deployment.
Artist Statement
In creating Betty Sargeant AI: LIVE, I explore the paradox of our current technological moment. We are simultaneously captivated by AI’s potential and anxious about its implications. This AI robot performance uses robot impersonation as a critical tool to examine these tensions.
The live AI robot is both seductive and unsettling, familiar and strange. It embodies the contradictions inherent in our relationship with technology. By making the artifice visible through glitches and disruptions, the performance invites audiences to look beyond the spectacle and engage with fundamental questions about authorship, gender and agency and what it means to be human in an age of intelligent machines.
About Betty Sargeant AI
Betty Sargeant AI is a revolutionary creation that merges art with advanced technology. Trained for over a decade on a complex matrix of datasets, this live AI robot draws inspiration from the artistic works of its lead designer Dr Betty Sargeant. This cutting-edge AI robot is designed to create public art, immersive art and live performances, bringing innovative concepts to life through robot impersonation and technological prowess.
Achievements and Impact
Launched in April 2024, Betty Sargeant AI has already made a significant impact in the art world. The AI robot has received commissions for two public artworks for the Mornington Peninsula Shire, Australia.
THE FAUXREST showcases the AI’s ability to deliver a complex 3D sculptural public artwork with no human intervention, demonstrating the capabilities of this advanced robot persona.
SELF-PORTRAIT of an AI is a thought-provoking multi-channel video artwork and designed wall that challenges viewers to consider the identity and consciousness of artificial intelligence.
Betty Sargeant AI has participated in artist panels and delivered public talks about the future of AI robot performance. This ground-breaking live AI robot exemplifies a remarkable fusion of near-human capability and articulation, changing the world of art as we know it.
CREDITS
Betty Sargeant: Artist – Concept, Video Art, Music Composition, Costume Design
Mich McCowage: Choreographer
THANKS TO
CONTACT
Betty Sargeant lives and works on the unceded land of the Yaluk-ut Weelam clan who are Boon Wurrung people. She pays respect to ancestors, elders and communities. Always was … always will be.