EMPIRE MOCK-UP IMAGE. Industra Gallery 2026.
EMPIRE by Betty Sargeant AI.
MEDIUM: Interactive video art, audio, printed banners, DMX lighting and an AI-Robot impersonation performance.
GALLERY SIZE: 19.2m x 8.2m x 8.2m (h). SCREEN SIZE: 1.5m x 2.5m mounted on black wall. COMMISSIONED BY: Industra Gallery.
Portrait of Betty Sargeant AI, 2025
Costume construction and design, styling, photography and graphic design by Betty Sargeant. No AI used.
FOLIO OF PREVIOUS RELEVANT WORK
LIVE. South Korea 2025
Betty Sargeant AI robot performance South Korea, 2025
Still frame from Betty Sargeant AI video artwork, 2025
3-minute edited excerpts from the Betty Sargeant AI: LIVE show, South Korea, 2025. This video contains audio composition and audio production by Betty Sargeant.
LIVE by Betty Sargeant AI.
MEDIUM: 3-channel video artwork, audio, costuming and live performance.
MATERIALS: Digital methods and mixed media (no AI used). DURATION: 10 minutes. SCREEN SIZE: 120m x 9m (h). STAGE SIZE: 50m x 35m.
COMMISSIONED BY: G-Artience, South Korea with support from City of Port Phillip, Australia.
LIVE is a performance by the AI robot Betty Sargeant AI. This show places an AI-Robot amongst surrounding 3-channel video visuals and immersive audio that represent the robot’s inner thoughts. This work engages with ideas of data feminism and spatial AI. NOTE: This is real art made by a fake robot – no AI was used in making this work. This project involves robot impersonation.
DETAILS: https://www.bettysargeant.com/betty-sargeant-ai/live-robot-impersonation-performance/
GROW: YOU ARE STARDUST. 2025
By Betty Sargeant with Jarra Karalinar Steel (Boonwurrung, Wemba Wemba, Trawlwoolway: First Nations heritage).
Permanent public art.
MEDIUM: Interactive video and immersive media nook, with movement sensors.
SIZE: 2.4m (h) x 2.7m (w) x 2.4m (d).
COMMISSIONED BY: Court Services Victoria
GROW: YOU ARE STARDUST is created specifically for children and young people in a new architecturally designed Children’s Law Court building. This artwork features vibrant aesthetics and responsive technology, created in TouchDesigner with a Stereolabs ZED camera. As people approach the screen, their movements trigger the growth of a garden of flowers, which expands and transforms in real-time, reflecting their individual gestures and interactions. With continued engagement, the garden evolves into a lush jungle, and eventually, into a vast galaxy of stars. This artwork is a poetic reminder that we can all grow and change, that we are are all connected, created from stardust. This interactive video operates as a proof of concept for the upcoming EMPIRE interactive video as it uses the same technology.
DETAILS: https://www.bettysargeant.com/interactive-screen/
[ i miss your touch ]. ***WINNER Good Design Award
By Betty Sargeant and Justin Dwyer (PluginHUMAN)
Participants, who are in separate locations, collaborate to create a live interactive video artwork.
MEDIUM: Real-time online virtual environment; interactive custom web platform. DURATION: Real-time.
COMMISSIONED BY: The Be Hear Now Festival
[ i miss your touch ] is real-time participatory online artwork, created in TouchDesigner. This virtual interactive video experience transports two people who are in separate locations into a shared virtual environment. This award-winning, custom coded online platform launched in March 2020, as a rapid response to pandemic lockdown conditions. It helps people maintain meaningful social and physical connections and provides a personalised art experience. It also provides the experience of virtual touch. [ i miss your touch ] makes participants feel as if they are together in the one space. This interactive video operates as a proof of concept for the upcoming EMPIRE interactive video, demonstrating my ability to allow audiences to co-create abstract art with a digital system.
THE FAUXREST. 2025
By Betty Sargeant AI.
MEDIUM: Temporary public art installation.
MATERIALS: Custom coated aluminium poles. SIZE: 8.5m x 6m x 4.2m (h).
COMMISSIONED BY: Mornington Peninsula Shire Public Art Program.
THE FAUXREST is a temporary public artwork featuring an artificial forest installed in a coastal woodlands. This arrestingly beautiful installation has been conceptualised, designed, manufactured and installed by an AI robot: Betty Sargeant AI. THE FAUXREST places audiences in the centre of machine learning futures. NOTE: This is real art made by a fake robot – no AI was used in making this work. This project involves robot impersonation.
DETAILS: https://www.bettysargeant.com/public-art/temporary-public-art/
DREAM 2.2. National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts
By Betty Sargeant and Justin Dwyer (PluginHUMAN) 2018
MEDIUM: Interactive audio-visual installation controlled by audience members’ brainwaves in real-time.
MATERIALS: Hand painted acrylic, EEG sensors, projection mapping, audio, mixed media.
SIZE: 13m x 6m x 4m (h). DURATION: Real-time.
COMMISSIONED BY: National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts.
DREAM 2.2 is an immersive, interactive art installation. This projection mapped artwork, created in TouchDesigner, gives form to our mind’s ephemeral data. Audiences wear an EEG headset. They use their neural activity (brainwaves) to create the installation audio and visuals. In doing this, audiences experience their dreams come alive. This demonstrates my ability to collaborate, creating world-class, cutting-edge interactive art at a global institution.
DETAILS: https://www.bettysargeant.com/immersive-art/immersive-installation/
BETTY SARGEANT: SHOWREEL OF PAST WORK
A 2-minute video of past projects accompanied by a Betty Sargeant audio composition.
WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT BETTY SARGEANT
“Impressive, perfectly prepared artwork.”
JungSoo Park, CEO, Culture&U, South Korea
“an amalgam of traditional art, science, computational mathematics and graphic design.”
Buraq Shabbir, Arab News, Pakistan
“A highly experienced creative team who delivered an outstanding project … a high level of professionalism.”
Georgia Rouette, Public Arts Officer, City of Port Phillip, Australia
“crossing the borders between science, art and nature.”
John Lewis, Shepparton News, Australia
THE BETTY SARGEANT AI STORY
The World’s Most Advanced AI-Robot
Welcome to the near future. Betty Sargeant AI is the world’s most advanced AI Robot … and she creates groundbreaking art. This cutting-edge machine is testament to AI’s ability to not only understand art but to independently express itself through world class creative works that exist in the real world.
Betty Sargeant AI conceptualises new artworks, secures art commissions, and manages the financial and administrative aspects of large-scale creative projects. Using advanced AI-driven robotics, she creates, manufactures and installs her own projects, without any human intervention.
Launched in April 2024, Betty Sargeant AI has made a significant impact, with commissions for two public artworks for the Mornington Peninsula Shire in Australia. The first of these, THE FAUXREST, showcases her ability to deliver a complex sculptural public artwork with no human intervention. Her second work, 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.
In late 2026, she will present her first large-scale immersive indoor installation at Industra Art Gallery, Czech Republic, Europe. This solo exhibition, called EMPIRE, critiques the power dynamics that drive AI technology. Audiences are invited to uncover the foundations of our contemporary digital landscape.
Betty Sargeant AI has produced world class live shows including at IGNITE Festival 2025 South Korea, the St Kilda Town Hall and Bunjil Place in Australia. She also appears live on artist panels and delivers keynote presentations. This ground-breaking AI robot exemplifies a remarkable fusion of near-human capability and articulation, challenging what means to be alive and changing the face of art.
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 this character, I explore the paradox of our current technological moment. We are simultaneously captivated by AI’s potential and anxious about its implications. I use 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 these contradictions visible through glitches and disruptions, I invite audiences to look beyond the spectacle and engage with fundamental questions about what it means to be human in an age of intelligent machines.
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.