Katherine Allbright
United States
Where do you locate yourself in relation to the systems you work with?
I locate myself inside the systems I work with, but not in service of them. I use artificial intelligence as a material and a collaborator, not as an authority or an answer. I am interested in how these systems reflect, amplify, and inherit human assumptions, especially around identity, gender, and power.
My position is one of interrogation and care. I work close enough to the tools to understand their biases and affordances, while maintaining enough distance to question what they normalize. Rather than treating AI as neutral or inevitable, I approach it as a cultural mirror that reveals how meaning is constructed, repeated, and sometimes fractured.
Where are you heading, and what is pulling you there?
I am moving toward work that dissolves certainty rather than producing resolution. My practice is pulled by questions of shared humanity, by the desire to loosen rigid categories, and by the tension between what is inherited and what can be reimagined.
I am guided by an interest in thresholds, moments where familiar symbols begin to fail and something more fluid emerges. I resist binaries, fixed identities, and linear narratives, and instead follow vectors of ambiguity, overlap, and transformation. What pulls me forward is the possibility that technology, when treated poetically rather than instrumentally, can open space for empathy, doubt, and recognition.
How would you describe the space your practice is currently unfolding in?
My practice unfolds in a hybrid space where physical presence, digital imagery, and synthetic voice intersect. It exists between screen and body, between static image and lived experience. Augmented reality allows the work to inhabit space rather than remain contained within it, inviting viewers to encounter meaning through proximity, movement, and perception.
This space is neither purely virtual nor fully physical. It is porous and relational, shaped by interaction and context. Within it, identity becomes less fixed, symbols become unstable, and viewers are invited to participate in meaning rather than consume it. The space my work occupies is one of quiet disruption, where familiar structures are held just long enough to be questioned.
Artist Statement
Statement of Truth
By Katherine Allbright
I work with AI and AR not because they are tools of the future, but because they allow me to express the layered truth of the present.
As a Tech artist, my work has always centered around emotional landscapes, private thoughts, unspoken longings, and personal mythologies. AI and AR help make those interior worlds visible. They allow the work to respond, evolve, and invite people into a shared space of reflection.
In "The Wishing Tree," I created an interactive video installation that invites participants to share their wishes. The tree, ever rooted in its integrity, morphs in response to the emotional tone of that wish. AI is used to help interpret the language and sentiment of each wish. The result is a visual and symbolic transformation that reflects a shared emotional truth. As the tree responds, something quiet but profound begins to unfold. Individual wishes start to echo one another, and the space shifts from “I” to us.
This is what excites me about working with intelligent systems. I am not interested in perfection or automation. I am interested in meaning and how technology can hold space for complexity, tenderness, and even contradiction. I use these tools to explore interactivity not as a novelty, but as a way to build a connection. Not just interaction between person and machine, but between people themselves.
For me, authorship remains rooted in intuition. AI may offer pathways or suggest associations, but the lens is still mine. The intention, the emotion, the curation of experience—that is the true code beneath the work.
My truth is this: I believe that when technology is directed with care, it can reveal what binds us. Even in an age of smart systems, human vulnerability is the most powerful signal we can send. And that art, now more than ever, should remind us that we belong to one another.
