Selection of Prior Work
2-minute showreel of past projects accompanied by a Betty Sargeant audio composition.
LIVE. 2025
By Betty Sargeant AI.
MEDIUM: 3-channel video artwork, audio, costuming and live performance.
MATERIALS: Digital methods and mixed media (no generative AI used).
DURATION: 10 minutes. SCREEN SIZE: 120m x 9m (high). 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/
THE FAUXREST. 2024
By Betty Sargeant AI.
MEDIUM: Temporary public art installation.
MATERIALS: Coated aluminium poles. SIZE: 8.5m x 6m x 4.2m (high).
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. 2018
By Betty Sargeant and Justin Dwyer (PluginHUMAN)
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 (high). DURATION: Real-time.
COMMISSIONED BY: National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts.
DREAM 2.2 is an immersive, interactive art installation. This projection mapping artwork, created in TouchDesigner, gives form to our mind’s ephemeral data. Audiences wear an EEG headset. They use their neural activity (brainwaves) to control the installation’s audio and visuals. In doing this, audiences experience their dreams come alive.
Details https://www.bettysargeant.com/immersive-art/immersive-installation/.
GROW: YOU ARE STARDUST. 2025
By Betty Sargeant with Jarra Karalinar Steel (Boonwurrung, Wemba Wemba, Trawlwoolway: First Nations heritage). Programming by Dan Macnish.
MEDIUM: Permanent public art. Interactive video in an immersive media nook, with movement sensors.
MATERIALS: Led screen, StereoLabs ZED Camera, Computer, TouchDesigner.
SIZE: 2.4m (H) x 2.7m (W) x 2.4m (D). DURATION: real-time.
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.
Details: https://www.bettysargeant.com/interactive-screen/
THE ART OF CONSTANT CHANGE. 2020
By Betty Sargeant and Justin Dwyer (PluginHUMAN)
A large-scale video artwork controlled by brainwaves.
MEDIUM: Temporary public art.
SIZE: 45m x 9m. DURATION: 6:31 minutes.
COMMISSIONED BY: Shepparton Arts Festival in Partnership with Shepparton Art Museum.
The Art of Constant Change is a video artwork. The fractured visuals are driven by the artists own brainwaves. This artwork highlights how our neural function is affected by constantly changing global conditions. This artwork was created in response to Covid Pandemic conditions.
REAL FAKE. 2024
By Betty Sargeant.
A multi-sensory art installation.
MEDIUM: Two channel video artwork, light wall, DMX lighting design, light box. SIZE: 8.5m x 6m x 3m(h).
COMMISSIONED BY: Linden New Art, Australia.
REAL FAKE invites audiences to consider the implications of artificial intelligence on global wilderness. Combining video and photography with hyper-realistic AI-generated scenes, REAL FAKE blurs the boundary between fact and fiction, prompting us to ponder whether what we see is captured by camera or conjured by computer algorithms.
Details: https://www.bettysargeant.com/immersive-art/ai-art/
PULSE. 2021
By Betty Sargeant and Justin Dwyer (PluginHUMAN).
Environment controlled light sculpture.
MATERIALS: LED lights, printed acrylic, mixed media, audio. SIZE: 3m x 2m x 2.5m (h).
COMMISSIONED BY: Experimenta Triennial of Media Art.
PULSE: The Life Force of Trees is a light sculpture controlled by environmental data collected by Betty Sargeant while observing significant trees in the Amazon, Panama, Taiwan, India and Australia. The artwork provides a broad international perspective, speaking to the interconnectedness of global ecosystems.
Details: https://www.bettysargeant.com/immersive-art/light-sculpture/
SELF-PORTRAIT of an AI. 2024
By Betty Sargeant AI.
Temporary public art installation.
MEDIUM: 3-channel video artwork on a designed wall (decal adhesives). SIZE: 10m x 3.5m (h).
COMMISSIONED BY: Mornington Peninsula Shire Public Art Program.
SELF-PORTRAIT of an AI is a thought-provoking installation that challenges viewers to consider the identity and consciousness of artificial intelligence. It offers a unique perspective on the role of AI in society. The artwork stands as a provocation around AI’s ability to independently express itself through art. NOTE: This is real art made by a fake AI-robot – no AI was used in making this work. This project involves robot impersonation.
Details: https://www.bettysargeant.com/public-art/self-portrait-of-an-ai/
DISCO APOCALYPSE. Karachi Biennial, 2022
By Betty Sargeant with Lorraine Brigdale (Yorta Yorta) and Justin Dwyer (PluginHUMAN)
Immersive audio-visual installation. A night club for end times. A hedonistic celebration.
MEDIUM: 8-channel video art, decal print designs, lighting, audio. SIZE: 21m x 7m x 4m (h).
COMMISSIONED BY: Karachi Biennial, Pakistan.
Welcome to DISCO APOCALYPSE. A nihilistic frenzy. An almost unbearable reality. We invite audiences to rave on the precipice of the abyss. This immersive light installation is a perspective-warping onslaught of over-saturated colour, light and sound. Layered visuals coat the disco’s walls and floor. Shafts of moving light and bass-heavy electronic grooves are felt viscerally. Multiple video artworks beam out from screens.
Details: https://www.bettysargeant.com/immersive-art/disco-apocalypse/
UNEARTHED. 2022
****Highly commended Indigenous Design Award: Good Design Awards****
By Betty Sargeant with Lorraine Brigdale (Yorta Yorta), Akshat Naurial and Justin Dwyer (PluginHUMAN)
A permanent public artwork on Yorta Yorta country (Shepparton, Australia).
MEDIUM: Projection mapping, paint, electronics, online 3D landscape, mixed media. SIZE: 21m x 4.5m (h).
COMMISSIONED BY: Shepparton Festival.
UNEARTHED engages both physical and digital landscapes. The artwork features a permanent mural with contemporary re-workings of Yorta Yorta shields by Lorraine Brigdale and enlarged micrographs by Betty Sargeant. Embedded in the mural is an icon that connects audiences with a digital landscape. At night the mural is transformed into a projection mapped light experience created by Justin Dwyer in TouchDesigner.
Details: https://www.bettysargeant.com/public-art/mural-art/
BREATHE. 2019
By Betty Sargeant and Justin Dwyer (PluginHUMAN)
Immersive, environment-controlled LED light installation. Temporary public art.
MEDIUM: LED lights, printed acrylic, mixed media, audio. SIZE: 9m x 5m x 2.5m (h).
COMMISSIONED BY: Digital Agora, Australia. EXHIBITED AT: White Night Festival, Australia 2019. Digital Agora Australia 2019. Geelong Performing Arts Centre 2019.
Inspired by organic structures, this artwork features recycled acrylic tubes, printed with images of microscopic elements from natural environments. The colours and patterns of the lights are controlled by environment data within TouchDesigner software. This immersive installation was created in response to Betty Sargeant’s research and field trips in the Amazon, Panama and Australia.
Details: https://www.bettysargeant.com/public-art/light-installation/
CONCEAL. 2019
Single-channel, rear projected video artwork. Temporary public art.
MEDIUM: Photo-microscopy, projection mapping. SIZE: 8.5m x 3m. DURATION: 6:24 minutes.
COMMISSIONED BY: Luminous Festival, Australia.
A fusion of digital and organic materials and processes that reveals hidden structures from our surrounding natural environment. Featuring Betty Sargeant’s microscope photographs of biological samples that were collected from significant Naarm, Australian ecosystems. The video, created in TouchDesigner, is formed from generative computer animations of the biological imagery.
Details https://www.bettysargeant.com/public-art/street-activation/.
[ i miss your touch ]. ***WINNER Good Design Award, 2020
***WINNER Good Design Award 2020***
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.
QUEEN. 2023
Permanent road painting art.
MATERIALS: Dulux Roadmaster paint. SIZE: 4.5m x 41m..
COMMISSIONED BY: City of Port Phillip, Australia.
This road painting artwork features the shape of the audio signal from G-Flip’s vocals on their hit song Queen. The soundwave runs the 41 meter length of historic George Lane, St Kilda, taking advantage of the site’s elongated footprint. The background of the artwork features a geometric coloured pattern that represents the dynamic range of the song’s instrumentation. QUEEN is a visual response to iconic contemporary music that has its roots in St Kilda.
Details: https://www.bettysargeant.com/public-art/road-painting/
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Betty Sargeant lives and works on the land of the Bunurong people and the Yaluk-ut Weelam 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.
